


Strangers in a strange land

by JesseMo (orphan_account)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Sansa Stark, Canon Divergence - The Battle of the Blackwater, Daenerys Targaryen-centric, Dragon Riders, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Meereen, Mix of book and show, No character bashing, Non-Sexual Slavery, Sansa Stark-centric, Sansa escapes Kings Landing, Sansa in Essos, Slavery, Slow Burn, more tags and characters will be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:33:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/JesseMo
Summary: On the night of the Battle of the Blackwater Shae smuggles Sansa out of Kings Landing rather than sending her to her rooms. She is made to board a ship to Volantis where she is taken in by a sewing house. Sansa tries to send word to her brother, but if he ever receives her letter she does not know. Shortly after her arrival in Volantis the wife of a master from Meereen is impressed by her sewing and embroidery skill and Sansa is sold by the seamstress who had taken her in.
Relationships: Daario Naharis & Daenerys Targaryen, Grey Worm/Missandei, Missandei & Sansa Stark, Sansa Stark/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 117
Kudos: 274





	1. Volantis

**Author's Note:**

> I really should finish the stories I already have posted before starting new ones. But here we stand.

Shae pulled her out of the Maiden Vault and taking her hand she dragged Sansa through halls, around turns, and downstairs until they finally arrived at a tiny room filled with rusted and broken kitchen pots of varying sizes. Shae lit a candle and when Sansa asked what they were doing in the room Shae hushed her. She was watching the flame of the candle. It flickered in one direction as if there was a breeze in the room but the room as windowless. Shae went to the wall the opposite the direction the flame was leaning and pushed the entire weight of her body, even asking Sansa to help until the wall gave way and it swung open to them like a door. She grabbed the candle and lead Sansa into the darkness.

The went down into a long tunnel with an arched ceiling and stone pillars. Shae pulled her along, and it felt like an eternity until she saw a green light. When they exited the tunnel onto a cliff. The off to the east the Blackwater Bay was on fire, ships burned, eaten by green flame, turning to ash almost impossibly quickly. They could feel the heat of the Wildfire from where they were and here the screams. Sansa started to panic, her breath came quick and erratic and Shae had to slap her to get her out of it.

“Start climbing,” she ordered, pushing her to one side of a cliff and pointing to her invisible footholds. Sansa had shaken her head, told Shae she couldn’t do it.

“You have to if you want to live!” she told Sansa before lifting up her skirts, tying them around her waist with the sash Sansa wore beneath her gown. Shae lifted her own skirts too, tucking and pulling through the front of her dress securely before urging Sansa again to start climbing.

Sansa thought of Bran, of Arya as her shaking hands clawed at the first holding. Her whole body trembled as she rose up, climbing to the top, Shae right behind her. She thought she would die with how many times she had nearly slipped. The whole endeavor was seeming impossible but somehow, and Sansa begged to stop so many times.

“We can’t now, keep going. Slowly, feel for the holdings!” Shae told her and Sansa realized for the first time Shae sounded frightened too.

She kept going finally reaching smooth landing on the Black Water Rush. Shae didn’t waste time, the city was in a panic. Shae drew the blade she had strapped to her thigh and holding Sansa close started walking. They pushed past screaming women, weeping men, and hiding children as they moved up and up to the fish market. They stopped at a small house where Shae slammed her fist five times in quick succession on the board of window. The shutters flew open and a faceless hand poked out, palm to the sky. Shae dropped a few dragons into the hand and it retreated only to return with a bag. Shae took it an then they continued towards the dock where a ship was boarding. There were men letting people on and sending them away. Shae went up to one of them. Handing him a small satchel. He looked inside and nodded.

Shae turned to Sansa then and handed her the bag. “This ship is taking people to the free cities to escape the war. I have secured your passage on it. The bag has a change of dress and dye for your hair.”

“No, I can’t go to Essos, I need to go North, join my brother and mother!” Sansa said frantic, trying to step back from Shae but the woman grabbed firmly onto Sansa’s shoulders, keeping her from going anywhere.

“That is what they assume you will have done when they realize you are gone and you will not get far enough before they find you. This is the best way. Once you land in Essos write to your brother and have someone retrieve you.” Shae told her, voice patient yet firm.

“What will I do, I---”

“Sell your gown and the jewels you have on you. It will help you pay for food and a place to stay. Write to your brother. If it takes too long you have skills. Find work, teach children to sing or dance, sew pretty clothes to sell.” Shae said as if all that were easy, like Sansa knew how to be on her own. She started to cry.

“Shh, Shh,” Shae pulled her into her arms, holding her before the man she had paid began to rush them. Wiping the tears from her eyes Shae kissed both of Sansa’s cheeks then tucked then bent down, lifting Sansa’s skirt and tying her own dagger to Sansa’s thigh.

She rose back up and looked Sansa dead in the eye. “If your brother does not send someone to get you, find a rich merchant to marry, maybe even a prince with your breeding.”

Shae chuckled but her face fell and her eyes glistened. “I love you, I would have killed for you. Right now this is the best thing I can think to do for you.”

“Go now,” Shae pulled back and moved Sansa towards the ramp of the ship, pushing at her shoulders until she started to walk up on her own. Her shoulders shook with each step until finally, she was on the deck. She looked back to wave to Shae but she was already gone.

She was shown to a room she would share with three other women. One was around Sansa’s age with wheatish hair and dark skin, almost the color of coal and the other an older woman with greying hair and a map of wrinkles on her face. Sansa didn’t notice at first but there is a small girl hiding behind her on the woman’s cot. It’s a tight fit but none of them complain, all anxious and nervous as they wait for the ship to leave. Sansa doesn’t waste much time and quickly takes the dye Shae said was in the bag and applies it to her hair. The other women glance at her, suspicious but they keep their tongues held.

The ship left, the sail out of the Blackwater terrifying and shakey as they hugged the southernmost part of the Blackwater Bay behind the last line of Stannis Baratheon’s ships, using the shadows of the ships to hide them. When someone comes knocking, telling them they made it out into the Narrow sea everyone in the room takes a sigh of relief.

Sansa assumed the ship would take them Braavos, there she would have been closer North and perhaps able to get in touch with her brother quicker. But the ship sails east to Volantis. She makes acquaintances with her bunkmates, learns their stories. The old woman and the child she was with were grandmother and grandaughter, their names were Lorna and Callie. Callie was a bastard whose father was a Volanti merchant. Lorna was taking her granddaughter to him in hopes he would offer his daughter a place in his house. Her mother was meant to go with her but she died of a fever two days ago. The girl who was around Sansa’s age was named Pala and was from Chataya’s whorehouse, a recent visitor from Volantis had taken a great liking to her and paid for her travel to come to stay with him as his live-in mistress. 

“And what of you, dying that pretty red hair of yours. And your gown is not that of a commoner. Clearly you are on the run,” Pala pointed out the obvious.

Sansa considered lying or not saying anything at all but in the end, she just gave them a brief explanation. They were already in the narrow sea, what harm would it really do. “I lived at court. A friend in the Red Keep helped me escape.”

Pala hummed as she leaned back in the cot, Sansa had gotten the floor as she was the last one to be assigned to their cabin. “Now you are going to start a new life in Essos? With that face and body, you shouldn’t have much trouble.”

That’s what frightened Sansa. When they arrived Pala, Sansa, Lorna, and Callie all went their separate ways.

Dressed in one of Shae’s maid gowns Sansa heeded her advice and went to try and get as much coin as she could for what she had on her. She would need to be able to rent a room later. She sold her jewelry, her gown, and corset along with her gold belt. She secured a room at a Volanti inn and stayed there for the rest of the day, weeping, scared, and alone. She had no idea what she was doing, this was never how she expected her departure from Kings Landing would happen, if ever. She wanted to go home. Once she was able to get herself under control she asked for parchment and quill from the inn keep and where to go to get a message to Westeros.

She wrote hastily about the events that had occurred leading to her escape, confessed and apologized, and pleaded for her brother to send someone as soon as possible to come and get her in Volantis. It was a fortnight before she heard of a ship heading to Westeros again. She prayed to the seven and the old gods it was also traveling North. It was, or so the crew member she managed to corner said. With what money she had she paid a messenger to board the ship and take her letter to White Harbor. She addressed it to Lord Manderly, not her brother. She trusted they would forward her letter on to Robb on the battlefield and if not to Winterfell.

The messenger was not cheap and Sansa’s funds were running dangerously low. She would have to look for work. She offered her talents to merchants, shop owners, even wealthy men and women on the street. She eventually had pity taken on her by a seamstress who lost a girl recently to childbed, a room was also available in her house. Sansa worked long hours for little pay, but she had a roof over her head and food in her belly. When she had enough money again, she sent another letter to the North updating her brother where she was staying.

Sansa avoided men like they were the plague, unnerved and worried for her maidenhead as she lived alone in the city. If she went out she went out with one of the other girls. Every day she looked around, expecting to see a Lannister soldier or hoping at least to see a Northern one. 

She bought more brown dye for her hair, to help her stay in disguise. Red hair wasn’t common in Essos and if Cersei and Joffrey had won and intercepted any of her letters with her location. It would be easier to escaped unnoticed when they were looking for a girl with red hair. And going by the name Sana Pole instead of giving her real name. She made a life, for herself living at the sewing house. She was even allowed the spare and unwanted fabric from the sewing house for her own personal use, saving money on buying new dresses. She made her own clothes in the styles of Volantis, caftans, and sunset dresses of hand-printed silk. The Sunset dresses were thin flowy things that kept you cool on the hottest days and showed more cleavage then Sansa was really comfortable with, with but a thin strap around the neck holding it up. Sansa preferred to wear her caftans over them but some days it was just too sweltering. To keep her hair off her neck and out of the way while she worked, she would simply twist and pin it atop her head, a hairstyle she once looked down on as a true poor woman’s hair.

She had been such a stupid, ignorant little girl. She had a new understanding and appreciation for the common folk, humbled as she was brought down to their level.

The sewing house was competitive, women completed with each other for notice, for praise hoping to be taken in by a wealthy and prominent family to be there head dresser. There were sabotage and backstabbing and Sansa realized in a sense it was not too different to the ladies at court. But instead of husbands, they fought to further their careers. Some did look for husbands, wishing rather be taken care of then to make their own way. That was Sansa once. As difficult things could be sometimes she turned away the attentions of any admirers in the weeks she lived and worked at the sewing house. Her brother would come to get her and then she would marry an honorable man of his choosing. She could not risk falling in love and running herself.

During her wait, she focused on her craft. It was an easy way to take her mind off things and she had always been one to put herself completely to her tasks. She learned to dye and handprint fabrics, how to use a loom, and weave. She had no intention to enter the rivalries of the sewing house and yet she was a part of it all the same. She was talented, naturally so, and it did not go unnoticed by the seamstress. She was often praised and when her own attire was complimented by customers with the head seamstress close enough to hear she ordered Sansa to make more to display in the store. 

Sansa was putting the new dresses, just finished that morning because the other girls had destroyed the originals and she had to start from scratch, onto he wicker mannequin in the store when entered a Meereenes woman. She had brown skin of the lighter variety, her thick black hair was oiled to shine. Her coarse hair was beautifully styled, loose, and naturally down at the back with a gorgeous raised twisted leading back from the front, and to make her look more like a queen she had a dazzling head chain of gold draped atop her head.

Her dark eyes were intensified by a light drawing of charcoal around her almond-shaped eyes. She wore a Tokar of indigo and lilac and silver-painted sandals.

“Magnificient Jezheka, welcome, welcome.” Sansa hears the head seamstress address the woman in bastard Valyrian. From the tone and use of ‘magnificent,’ the woman was of the nobility. Sansa had picked up a little of the language out of necessity since the start of her stay in Volantis. 

A slave boy carries Jezheka’s things. Silks were tossed over his arms and shoulders, satchels of all sizes looped and hanging from his arm. With them was also a slave swordsman as a guard.

“Good day, Madame Turakina,” she nodded her head to the older woman, hands clasped in front of her, shoulders back.

“Yes, yes, look right this way, please,” Madame Turakina says and moves around to show their patron the dress Sansa had just put on display. It was an altered style of the Sunset dress with a chemisier satin robe over it and a thin belt to accentuate the shape of the waste. Sansa stepped back from the displays at the wave of Turakina’s hand.

Jezheka’s eyes widened slightly with appreciation then continued on to the other pieces. Her smile grew with each one and she examined the quality of the hem to the details of the embroidery and beading along the necks of some of them. Some were just completely untouched silk, crossed and draped beautifully in a stylish and modest look.

“Yes, they are all wonderful. The style especially” Jezheka grinned at the head seamstress, snapping her fingers for her slave boy to bring her her purse. “I’ll take them.”

“Sana, hurry and remove the pieces and package them for the Magnificient Jezheka.” Madame Turakina clapped her hands at her. Then added, “Good work, girl”

The mention stopped Jezheka who looked over her shoulder at Sansa who had started to carefully take off the garments.

“She designed these?” she asked Turakina, eyes fixed on Sansa now in a way that made her anxious. “Not just made them?”

“Ah, yes.” the old woman answered nervously with a nod, wringing her hands and glancing greedily to the pouch of coins in Jezheka’s hand. “Now the matter of the price for these will be---”

Jezheka took small, yet surprisingly quick steps over to Sansa, grabbing her chin between slender fingers.

“Pretty eyes,” she said then began to turn her face every which way, examining her. Sansa had grown tan in the Volanti son from her errands to the open market, and the days by the window working. Her complexion had gone ruddy, her forehead, cheeks, and chest having a blushing patch of red and her cheeks and shoulders had freckles now. She never looked more like a Northerner she would think when she managed to have a turn in front of the houses shared looking glasses.  
  
Jezheka was still speaking as she turned over her hands, looking at the callouses and stains that had developed from her hard work. "We have many people with purple eyes, green eyes, brown eyes. But blue? Blue is rare here."

“You have other ideas?” she asked Sansa, meaning the dresses, robes, and caftans on display. 

Sansa wasn’t sure how to answer and she glanced over Jezheka’s soldiers at Madame Turakina. The head seamstress nodded her head, most likely assuming if the answer was yes the wealthy woman would return.

“Y-yes,” Sansa managed to answer in her broken bastard Valyrian.

Jezheka smiled. “Where are you from? Your accent is not of these cities just like your eyes,”

“Westeros,” then she quickly added “I am waiting for my brother,”

“And how long have you waited for him so far?” she asked, thin brows raised and Sansa swore she saw a look of pity in her eyes. 

“Only two months since I first wrote to him last,” she answered.

Jezheka clucked her tongue as if she knew something Sansa did not. “Poor child,”

Sansa kept her head down, mouth a steady line. She had practice with women like this in Cersei, condescending, and mocking.

“He’s coming,” Sansa said, confident.

“Oh, has he written you back then?” she asked Sansa who stepped away from her, returning to packing her purchase.

“He is a soldier in the war, it will take time for him to get the chance to send a message to me,” Sansa explained and she felt the ghost sting of the smacks to her back, the hard flat side of a Kings Gaurd blade beating down on her every time her brother had a victory over Joffrey, “He’s strong. He’s won every battle he’s ever fought. He’ll come to get me,”

She’s trying to keep from crying, she already has nights where she cries with doubt her brother will not send anyone for her, that he cares not enough to spare a few men and a ship to come to get her. Why hadn’t he answered back?

“Add the girl to my purchase,” Sansa whips around to Jezheka who is once more speaking to Madame Turakina.

“No!” Sansa cries out in the common tongue and Turakina hisses at her to shut up. “Please, don’t sell me!”

Turakina looks at Jezheka.

“She is my best girl, she brings me in quite a lot of business and coin with her skills. Not only that she can speak the common tongue, but she also had lessons in Westeros customs, history, song, and dance.” she was trying to raise the price for her, and Sansa wanted to throw up.

“I am a freeborn woman from Westeros, you can not sell me!” Sansa shouted with her shoulders back, trying to hold on to her dignity, and the girls in the back peered out to see what the commotion was about. “I am princess Sansa of House Stark, sister to the king in the North of Westeros.

“In Westeros, girl, you might be someone. Here you are nothing, no one, I picked you off the street when you were begging for work, I gave shelter, silk to put on your back, sandals on your feet and table to eat from,” Turakina went over to her and slapped her across the face for her insolence. It was loud, but it was a flea bite compared to the strikes she had taken by the King’s Guard at Joffrey’s command.

Turakina turned back to Jezheka. “Now then, about the prices for all of this. Since the girl seems like she might give you some grief I suppose I can ask for a slightly lower price then what she's worth,”

Sansa started to cry as they negotiated, she couldn’t help it. Perhaps she could run but the moment her eyes went to the door the slave swordsman stepped in front of it. When the price was set and the money is given over for silk and her person both Sansa fell to her knees and wept.


	2. Behind the Black Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn who Jezheka is and how high some of her friends in Volantis go.  
> Sansa resigns herself to her new fate and makes a new friend from the Summer Isles.

Sansa could barely control her breathing. She felt like she was chocking as each breath came out followed by a rattling of her ribs. And her heart pounded so fast, so painful she worried it was ready to burst inside her chest. She felt faint when shackles were put on her ankles and wrist by the slave sword of Jezheka. But she didn't faint. She walked, followed the noblewoman, and her slaves out to the street.

“What name did you give Madame Turakina when she took you in?” Jezheka asked, keeping to the common tongue with her as she boarded her palanquin. She put her head out the window so she could continue talking to her as her slaves lifted her up. Sansa and the slave boy were meant to walk beside it. “clearly it was not your true name, _princess_?” 

Sansa wondered if she had even believed her when she told them who she was and just really didn't care or if Jezheka dismissed it as a far fetched lie she thought up at the moment to try and save herself. 

“Sana Pole,” Sansa swallowed, her voice thick from her crying.

“Sana is a well enough name for a slave,” she told her with a smile, nose upturned.

“I am Jezheka, wife of Marzhar Mo Merreq and daughter of Hazdhan Zo Loraq. I am your master, _princess,_ you will address me as master Jezheka or Noble Lady. Is that understood?” she glanced at her expectantly from the pampered padding of her palanquin. She might have let Sansa's outburst go in the shop but now Sansa belonged to her and such displays would clearly not be tolerated again. 

“Yes, my Noble Lady,” Sansa swallowed and nodded. Broken already. Jezheka’s smile grew at Sansa’s new demure attitude.

“You learn your place quickly _,_ good, _”_ she smirked and then turned her eyes to the street ahead.

“Your skills will be put to good use as my personal seamstress and I have a daughter you will teach Westorosi dances too,” she explained to Sansa as they continued on. 

“Yes, my Noble Lady,” She repeated, head down rather than held high.

She wasn’t a princess or even a lady in these lands, just a poor foreigner whose brother hadn’t come for her. She told herself it was because of the war that he didn’t write back, that he didn’t want to risk Cersei or Joffrey or any of his enemies knowing where she was so they could hurt her. That he was sending his most trusted and loyal men to retrieve her and that when they found her gone for Madame Turakina's they would search all of Essos for her. Robb loved her like their father had loved his sister and their father fought a war and scoured Westeros all the way to Dorne to get her back. Robb would do the same. He would.

Yet there was doubt. Maybe Robb didn’t love her enough. He could have asked to trade the Kings Slayer for her and he did not. Was her value as a sister of a king not equal to that of an uncle to a king? At the time she thought had thought. But with time it was harder and harder to hold on to the hope that her brother was going to save her, that he loved her enough to take risks and make sacrifices in the war just to get her back.

A new tear trickled down her cheek. She should have stayed in Kings Landing, risked the outcome of the battle. Even if the Lannister did win against Stannis a hostage of war was not a slave. She was a bird in a guilded cage, but not a slave. She had not been made to wear chains as she did now and the cruelness of Kings Landing felt like a harsher bite against the metal on wrists and ankles.

She kept leaving places she didn’t want to be only to find herself in a worse place than the one she had left behind. Winterfell for Kings Landing, Kings Landing for Essos. She should never have begged for her father to accept the betrothal to Joffrey, she should have never left Winterfell. She was never going to go home now. Her family would just become a memory.

They stopped to purchase silks form a few other merchants, wine, and trinkets. They walked for hours until Jezheka called to her slaves to take her back to the Blackwall. Only the Old Bloods inside the walls could invite friends, slaves, and foreigners to pass into the sacred labyrinth of palaces, courtyards, temples, towers, and cloisters. The Old Bloods were those who could prove their ancestry was of Valyria. Sansa, of course, had never been inside. Jezheka had some powerful friends.

When the gates were opened they had to walk the thickness of the wall, so thick that six-horse chariots to race around it's top. When they got all the way through the Black Gate Sansa gasped at the city for which she had only glimpsed the glowing domed rooftops that towered above the Black Wall. The buildings were made of a lavender glazed stone that was completely smoothed out to appear seamless and shined. The light of flame from ivory torches lit the red-black path under their feet. To Sansa, it looked like they were walking on a river of blood. 

It still smelled, but not like outside the Black Walls. The blistering, humid heat of Volanits seemed milder within the city. There were tall hedges of night-blooming flowers, dragon gargoyles in homage to Valyria, and ornate fountains of silver and gold. There were balconies of singing women, chatting Old blood’s with wine in hand, dancers below. Then Sansa saw the slaves with them, their faces tattooed to symbolize their status. Sansa prayed her master would not tattoo her face.

“Worry not, Sana. The Meereenese do not tattoo our slaves but you will wear a collar,” a collar did not seem so bad in comparison to being branded by ink.

“Thank you, Noble Lady,” Sansa replied. She tried to focus on how lavish and mystical the city was to take her attention away from thoughts of her new enslavement. Just for a moment, she might imagine. She was always good at that, imagining things.

Sansa wondered if Old Valyria had looked anything like this city. Old Volantis was, after all, the first colony of Old Valyria. The ‘first daughter’. It was why the Volanti held themselves so high above everyone else. 

“You will soon find that I am one of the most generous and kind masters, Sana.” Jezheka continued to speak to her, not allowing Sansa the compassion of forgetting who she was now. “I may have a sharp tongue and hand with you if necessary but if you do as your told you will be comfortable, you will be fed and untouched.”

Sansa looked at her then and Jezheka smiled. “I do not permit my slaves to be whores in my house. You will remain chaste under my ownership.” 

Sansa supposed that should be a relief to hear.

They eventually arrived at a green-stone palace, where a woman of silver-gold hair and brown eyes with a small nose and plump lips came out of the door. She was older than Jezheka with a curvaceous body but small breasts, wearing a long, shimmering sunset dress of gold silk with a shawl of lace about her shoulders, around her thick neck she wore heavy jeweled necklaces of various stones and lengths. Her eyes were, like Jezheka’s, drawn around with charcoal and she had rouge on her cheeks and lips. She was not beautiful, but she was not ugly either.

“Friend, come, come.” The woman greeted Jezheka in Valyrian, putting her arm around her friend to lead her inside as she stepped out of her palanquin, “how was your trip to the markets?”

“It went very well. I found a seamstress from Westeros at Madame Turakina’s. It is the girl behind us,”

The blond looked over their shoulders at Sansa, appraising her appearance with a frown. “She doesn’t look like much.”

“No, she might have once been pretty but I think the sun has ruined her skin. I will give her some ointments and see if we can fix that.” her new master shrugged. 

“You do like your slaves to be pretty,” the other woman said and they both laughed.

“And you must see what she created, it was why I had to buy her. The designs she made and her needlework are incredible, I could not have you or someone else snatching her for themselves if I could help it.” Jezheka continues their conversation, Sansa and the slave boy following behind, the slave sword at her back.

“I will have her shown the slave quarters.” the other woman nodded and with a wave of the hand one of the woman’s attendants approached Sansa, a hand out to direct the way. Sansa was brought to a room of five other female slaves, a cramped space with a large window that they could sit in and cotton filled bedrolls tiled the floor. There was a small table with chairs on one side for food and drink. She was released from her chains and left in the room until she was called upon.

The slave women stared at her blankly, barely paying attention to her, and turned their backs to her when she found her sleeping spot and started to cry. Only one of the slave women spoke the common tongue and was also the only one who tried to comfort her. She was from the Summer Isles, an ebony-skinned woman with even darker eyes. She was as tall and willowy like Sansa but much older than her and no less beautiful. Her black hair was in box braids, it’s length reaching past her hips. Her smile was big and kind as she introduced herself as Amara. Then she asked Sansa her name.

“Sana,” she told her, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. Her true name hadn't saved her from being sold into slavery, so why bother telling it to anyone anymore. Besides, Jezheka said Sana was a good enough name, better to just abide by it.

“You are a Westerosi slave. Not many of you on this side of the sea,” Amara noticed from her accent. She brushed some of the loose hairs that had escaped Sansa’s bun back from her face. “You were just bought today?”

Amara’s own accent was like honey, smooth and almost liquidy. It was wonderful on the ears.

“Yes,” Sansa said, her body bowed with defeat. “I worked at a sewing house. Noble Lady Jezheka was impressed with my work and asked to buy me off the head seamstress,”

“You thought you were free, didn’t you, that you couldn’t be sold like that?” Amara was not trying to be cruel, Sansa could tell. Her voice was not condescending in they way Turakina or Jezheka were with her.

“I knew about slavery in the east. I came here as a refugee from the war in Westeros, I thought would be safe as I waited for my brother,” Sansa started to cry again and she wondered if she would ever run out of tears to shed.

“I see, you didn’t know that when you take work in Volantis you agree to indentured servitude. It probably wasn’t even explained to you by your employer before you agreed.” she sighed, and Sansa realized this was perhaps a common occurrence.

Amara continued to explain. “Slaves don’t get paid of course, but indentured servants do, to compensate for the risk of being sold or traded by the shop keeps. If you saved enough when or if someone has the desire to buy you can offer to pay some of the asking price for your person, to stay where you are rather than be bought.”

“The girls at my sewing house were so competitive, what was the point of that?” Sansa asked, seeming to rethink a lot of her encounters now.

“If they get a good reputation for their skills they could be traded to a more popular house, with better accommodations and meals, and it also increases your value so masters aren’t so quick to pay for you if they do take an interest. Some of these masters can be rather frugal,” the older woman explained nudging her to turn around. She took down Sansa’s hair and began to brush through it.

It made Sansa think of her mother. Oh how she should have stayed with her, helped take care of Bran and Rickon with her rather than leave her. She missed her so much. Her voice, her warmth, the way she would cradle Sansa’s cheek and tell her how proud of her she was. 

“If you have a kind employer they may let you leave to marry, but even then your new husband has to pay a compensation fee for the loss of a laborer,” she said as she put Sansa’s hair back up but now it was tighter and neater. The heat was still terrible and it was better to keep one’s hair off their neck to help them stay cool.

“How do you know so much,” Sansa turned back around to face Amara now that her hair was done. 

“I have been here for the last fifteen years. And you are not the first crying girl who I have comforted who told be a similar story," she said, looking at some of the other women in the room.

"And I listen. I watch them laugh and mock us, call us stupid though we are the ones who teach their children because they are too lazy to do so themselves.” she rolled her eyes.

“Where are you from?” Sansa asked and Amara delighted in telling her all about the Summer Isles. Sansa blushed scarlet at some of the things Amara told her about her people and their customs. Amara said she had just risen to the ranks of priestess when she was abducted from her home island. 

Later food was brought, a minuscule supper to divide amongst themselves. Sansa hadn’t much of an appetite but Amara encouraged her to eat and drink what she could. She would need her strength.

Jezheka stayed for another sen-night inside the Black Wall at the hospitality of her friend. In that time Sansa was fitted with a slave collar and learned that the lady of the palace was named Jaenara. She began attending her new master, dressing her, and bathing her. These were things Sansa never thought she would do for another person. She had always been on the receiving end of such treatment. She was also made to model the garments she had made at Madame Turakina’s for them. Lady Jaenara was as taken with them as Jezheka had been and asked Jezheka for her own before she left. That meant when Sansa wasn’t with Jezheka she was sewing till her fingers went numb and blistered recreating the pieces for Lady Jaenara’s size in the time they had before they left the palace for Meereen. Somedays she had to work through the night, sitting in the window with nothing but the moons glow to light her progress.

Curious, Jaenera and Jezheka would have Sansa work in front of them some times, finding her quick stitching fascinating while they also commanded she tell them about Westeros, the war, the clothes, and the men.

Sansa humored them with tales and descriptions of things from Westeros she knew they would prefer then the truth. They really didn't care about the current war, though they asked about the Lannisters. Even the reputation for their wealth was well known in Essos. 

They began to speak about the Targaryen's which lead to a discussion about the apparently last Targaryen in the world. A girl, Daenerys Targaryen who had been married to a Dothraki and made her way to Qarth.

“I hear she has baby dragons!” Jaenara explained excitedly, clapping her hands like a child. “It’s a sign I say, the Valyrian freeholds will rise to greatness again. It is our right to rule the world.”

She sounded so sure, but Valyria had been destroyed in the Doom, was not some sign in itself? Or were dragons like the phoenix bird of Asshai, rising from the ashes?

Joffrey didn’t have dragons and it was a pleasant thought to imagine him being eaten by one. He used to rave about the Targaryens, admired their horribleness as much as Sansa had admired their greatness and elegance from the songs. She adored the stories of the Naerys and her Dragonknight, the Prince of Dragonflies, and Good Queen Alysanne who had was close friends Alarra Stark. She of course never let her father know, not after what Prince Rhaegar had done to their aunt. 

Her father had never spoken a resentful or hateful word about the Targaryen’s, not like King Robert. In fact, her father didn’t speak of the king who had killed his father and brother or the prince that raped his sister, at all. Never. And the children all realized it was best to never ask him about Roberts Rebellion, if they had a question on the matter of its events then they should go to Maester Luwin.

Sansa was around five when she asked Maester Luwin if the Targaryen’s were evil.

“There is good and evil in every man, my dear,” he had said patiently, wisely. “and if we looked, we could find cruel and merciful men and women both, in any house there ever was.”

“Targaryen, Stark, Tyrell, Lannister, Baratheon.” he listed to her just a few examples, “None are completely innocent, they have all in some way at one point in time committed a heinous atrocity against their fellow man.”

“So, no, I do not believe house Targaryen is evil, child. No more than House Stark.” he smiled, a sage-like smile, wrinkled and almost melancholy, “For if we determine the worth and morals of a house by the actions of a few terrible men and women, then every great house would be evil,”

That had made Sansa think.

“Then why couldn’t the Prince Viserys stay and be king? Perhaps I could have been his queen one day!” when she said this Maester Luwin humored her with a chuckle and ran a thin hand over her hair. Smooth from her mother’s earlier brushing. He did not answer her, instead, he told her it should be about time for her lessons with her Septa and shooed her off. She realized now she must have been bordering on treasonous thoughts and questioning with Maester Luwin. After all, Robert Baratheon was there King and he hated all the Targaryen's, guilty and innocent.

She was such a silly, romantic, stupid little girl. She hadn’t really cared who was king, only dreaming that she would someday have a chance of being a beautiful and admired queen living a life of grandeur and romance. From being a high born, wishing to be a queen and now she was a slave. The thought brought bitter tears that she was quick to wipe away when in front of her master.

When she was done her work, Lady Jaenara was very pleased with everything, dancing in her new robes and sunset dresses that had ‘the finest embroidery I have ever seen’ Lady Jaenara complimented though she looked to Jezkeka to praise rather than Sansa. She spoke how jealous she was of Jezheka for finding the girl before she did and how the other woman would be the envy of all the master’s wives in Meereen for sure when she arrived back home and was seen in her new garbs.

Finally, the day came when they were to leave. Sansa had clung to Amara and slept beside her, crying in the morning before she had to leave. The Summer Isle woman had been kind and a teacher in their short time together. She gave Sansa advice on how she might make things easier on herself with her new life and the masters she would serve. How she might even earn respect if she worked hard enough and pleased her masters. The slave boy, who she now knew was called Niqai, had to pull her away in the morning to leave with their master. Her collar never felt tighter around her neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are wondering how Sansa gave up so easily, she's in chains, she's been sold. Daenerys wasn't exactly fighting tooth and nail when she was found in the Dothraki sea and her hands were bound and she was dragged to the khalasar. Realistically Sansa can't do anything, and she is someone very much aware she can't fight her way out of her situation.  
> Also please keep in mind this is not a completely jaded Sansa yet, and I think her judgment of Daenerys for who her father(And her judgment of Alys and Ned) was or should be considered out of character in the show when you think of the prejudice Sansa faced as Ned's daughter in KL.  
> The inside of Old Volantis is never described so this is my own imagination on what it might look like. I thought of the red and black of Targaryen's and the lavender of Valyrian eyes, the white of the Velaryion banner and that is how you got the color combination  
> The Volantenese is described as strange and subtle people, obviously, Jaenara is not like that but we can't expect all of them to be the same.


	3. Pyramid of Merreq

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We review Meereen, Sansa's life as a slave in Meereen and how Daenerys' arrival changes everything.

Meereen was the largest of the cities that made up Slavers Bay, as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. It was built of bricks of many colors, catching the bright light of the sun and making the city glow in a rainbowish hue on the clearest day. But it was the pyramids, great, monstrous things but none so much as the Great Pyramid. It was at least eight hundred feet tall, as tall as The Wall, with a bronze harpy balanced on its tip. 

Jezheka’s lived in one of the pyramids, not the Great Pyramid of course, but the Pyramind of Merreq which stones were green and yellow. Sansa was now a slave to one of the Old Slaver Families, The Great Masters. They were the rulers of the city. Jezheka was born to one and married into another. In certain ways, the families of Meereen were similar to the Great Houses of Westeros.

The heat was milder in Meereen and not as humid as it was in Volantis, with cool breezes often coming in from the bay. The city smelled like any other city, but Meereen had a sewer system that helped take the waste away and so the stench of shit and piss was not as strong as other cities such as Kings Landing and Volantis.

The city was bright, full, and bustling. Alive. There were several markets, a temple and fighting pits that were colosseum like structures where slaves and others fought. Like a tourney but far bloodier. Mele tournaments in Westeros usually ended when the defeated yielded, but in the fighting pits, the winner was only determined when their opponent was dead. It reminded her of Joffrey’s name day tournament.

Many who fought in the fighting pits found it to be an honor as the fights were seen as religious events, blood sacrifices made to the Gods of Ghis. It is a display of courage, skill, and strength. The winners are pampered and acclaimed, the losers honored for their sacrifice to the gods. The defeated, slave, or otherwise has their name engraved on the Gates of Fate and for criminals, the fighting pit is their trial by combat. If they win they are innocent. But for others it was not an honor or a choice they made themselves because they were sold into the fights, their lives gambled on by the people who had thrown them into the dirt with a sword.

For Sansa, her life as a slave in Meereen was a relatively peaceful one. She slept with more than a dozen other slave women in a dirty, roomless hall on the very bottom floor of the pyramid. They laid on thin mats of woven straw and had only a few candles to light the windowless room they were stuffed in. They were allowed only a little water to share amongst themselves to clean in the mornings and given crushed lavender to rub under their arms to help with their smell so they don't risk offending their masters. The food was as sparse as it had been during her stay at Lady Jaenera in Volantis but she did not starve.

Jezheka was true to her word and was a far more generous and kind master than Sansa had witnessed others to be. She did not go out of her way to be cruel and she gave her a private workshop in the pyramid with every tool she needed and bolts upon bolts of fabric. It was a clean room that she did not need to share and she was given lemon water when she worked. 

Sansa met Jezheka’s brother and father in the way that any slave met the family or acquaintance of their masters, serving them.

They were both men with kind smiles who treated her decently enough if there was ever a reason to speak to one another for something. Jezheka’s brother, Hizdhar always complimented the tokens, the gowns, and the capes she made Jezheka and her daughter, offering her praising nods rather than speaking to his sister like she was the one who had made them. Their father was constantly at odds with his daughter's husband, both having to entirely different views on how slaves should be treated and what rights they did and did not have. He had revolutionary ideas about opening learning houses to teach slaves of all ages new skills, to give them wages and private housing rather than lump them all together in small, windowless buildings and rooms where they grew sick from one another. He wanted to feed them better, to open a public bathhouse for them to help control lice infestations and disease amongst them.

He was a member of the master's council and Sansa prayed daily that his bills would pass at council.

Sansa had only been struck and whipped a few times since she became a slave. After she came to Meereent he first time was when she accidentally pricked the Noble Lord Marzhar when fitting him with the new robes his wife had her made, he struck her across the face. Then there was the time she had been whipped at the orders of Jezheka when she had completely lost her control and slapped Mezzara, Jezheka’s daughter. She had said something about Sansa’s family, people she knew nothing about, and Sansa just...snapped.

She tried so hard not to be resentful of Mezzara. The child did not enslave her, she was a good and sweet girl, who never talked down to Sansa but treated her as a respected adult. She didn’t hold any ill will towards Sansa which reminded her of Prince Tommen and she was quick to laugh and smile like Bran and she fierce like Rickon for one so young too and sometimes, when Sansa looked into Mezzara’s dark eyes when she would tug at the overlaps of her dress or would pull out her braids, Sansa saw her sister Arya. They looked nothing alike, Mezzara had a rounder face, her skin was dark and hair a different texture and shape, but it was not her appearance that reminded Sansa of Arya. It was her spirit.

Sansa could have been put to death for striking a master or any of their family but Jezheka valued her skill with needle and silk too much to kill her. The Meereenese women had all started gravitating to her master since she began to wear the dresses and robes Sansa had been making her and Mezzara actually loved Sansa quite a bit. The girl would oft not behave less Sansa was with them and would sneak into Sansa’s workshop where he would ask Sansa to tell her about Westeros and sing her songs from her homeland while she waved Sansa’s measuring stick like a sword, pretending she was a champion in the fighting pits. Sansa always indulged her, even when she was exhausted and the blisters on her fingers threatened to pop.

After she had been whipped, with her back open to the air and blood drying on her skin, she got on her knees and bent forward in an apologetic bow to Mezzara, begging for her forgiveness. The girl, of course, forgave her, sniffling as she told Sansa to stand up and that she was sorry for saying something that upset Sansa. When she went to hug Sansa her mother had chastised her. Slaves were not family, they were not people or even pets. They were things. To hug Sansa would be like hugging a vase, useless, and embarrassing to anyone who might see.

Mezzara was a brave and tender child. She had wiped her eyes, stared her mother defiantly in the eyes, and wrapped her little arms around Sansa’s thin waist with a glare at her mother. Jezheka has signed, rubbing her temple and saying something in old Ghiscari Sansa didn’t understand before dismissing Sansa for the rest of the day with no supper and the warning not to expect a morning ration either.

Without her own money and leave to buy hair dye, Sansa’s roots had begun to grow out red. When Jezheka had caught sight of the copper in her hair she had delighted in it.

“No other master in all of Meereen has a slave with _red_ hair!” she was overjoyed, just thinking about the jealous looks she would be given when seen with Sansa out in the market or streets.

Her husband suggested they breed Sansa so that they could have and sell even more red-haired slaves. As if she were a prized hound or some other animal to breed at their pleasure. Sansa had paled, her stomach knotted and she almost threw up when Jezheka had actually seemed to consider it. Up until then Jezheka’s promise of Sansa being untouched had stayed true. Whenever the female slaves left the pyramid for errands they were shadowed by guards to protect their chastity and they were never allowed alone with the male slaves, guards stationed in the night to make sure there were no perverse rendezvous of men and women. 

Sansa had been close to vomiting, but she had swallowed it back down. If she made a mess she would be punished for certain. She kept her eyes closed as she waited for Jezheka to reply to her husband’s suggestion with held breath. Her hands had trembled where they were clenched in the skirt of her slave attire and she felt light-headed as she stood against the wall with the other slaves while the masters took their meal.

“No, not now.” Jezheka shook her head, looking Sansa over before she smiled at her husband. “She’s a young thing still, let us get the most out of her youth before we breed her as I am not opposed to the idea,”

The Noble Lord Marzhar didn’t insist further but Sansa felt no relief. She was starting to understand her master more and more along with the other masters. As Sansa’s hair grew out it would garner the attention of others, masters would come to Jezheka and suggest the same thing as Marzhar. She was not a person, she was a thing, to be bred and used as pleased by the masters. If they wanted to breed her so she would give them more pretty, redhaired slaves she would not be able to refuse. If that day came, before she is made any less a human, she would fly from the walls of the city to the hard, dirt below and set herself free.

“Astapor has been taken!” she heard Noble Lord Marzhar exclaimed from the other room one afternoon. Sansa was with Mezzara, teaching her a Westerosi dance and she strained to focus her hearing on the conversation as she instructed the child at the same time.

“That bitch, she purchased all of the Unsullied using her dragon than she had the beast set Kraznys on fire. She ordered the unsullied to kill everyone!” he went on. “Every master, the women included.”

He must be speaking of Daenerys Targaryen. Astapor was the northmost city of Slavers Bay. Sansa had heard of the Unsullied bred and trained there, of what they did to them. It made her shiver to think of it too long. The masters were beasts. Monsters. More so than any dragon, wolf, kracken or lion, it was the masters that were the most capable of such nightmarish things. Dragons did not castrate little boys, they did not rape women, or order men to murder babies to prove themselves. 

_Good, let her burn them all._ Sansa thought as she corrected Mezzara’s stance. _But not her, not the children._

Sansa smiled at Mezzara and continued with their lesson.

Weeks later, Lord Marzhar raged at dinner that Daenerys had also taken Yunkai and about how the sellswords that Yunkai hired betrayed them to join the foreign queen. She took more than half of the cities slaves with her and were continuing south toward Meereen next.

A few nights later Hazdhan Zo Loraq, Jezheka and Hizdhar’s father, was arguing with his son in law about how the other could approve the council’s decision to crucify slave children along the road to Meereen. 163 boys and girls, with and without parents, taken and posted to crosses at every mile marker pointing the way to Meereen to ward off Daenerys Targaryen. 

“Children, boy, children!” Hazdhan raged, facing a startling shade of purple. “Slave or no, this is going too far. How can you condone this, how could you not look at your own girl and think this not a crime against the Graces themselves!?” 

His daughter was at the table, tucked against her mother, frightened by the shouting of her father and grandfather.

Upon hearing about what had been done to the children Sansa did throw up that time and Marzhar came over with a leather paddle, swiped it across her face, and then took her by the back of her neck and brought her to her knees. He pushed her face into her own sick and commanded she lick it off the stone. Not even Joffrey had ever made her do something so horrible.

“Stop, it papa, leave Sana alone!” Mezzara begged for her, her mother shooshing her and encouraging her to eat her sausage of dog.

What had she become? Sansa thought with a whimper, as meek and weak as a newborn kitten much less a direwolf.

_I am a wolf, I am a Stark of Winterfell, I---_

“I am slave,” and she obeyed with shameful tears in her eyes and her stomach rolling as she was after with the scent of her vomit. Master Marzhar pressed her face down further and she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue.

“This is how, Hazdhan!” he said, hitting her over the head again with the paddle. “A man chooses, a slave obeys. Look at her! Spineless, no will. She is a beast, a vermin. Their offspring or no different. My daughter is a daughter of man, not a slave and that is the difference.”

His daughter was currently sobbing, snot running down her face, and being held back by her mother as she screeched at her father.

“That is how I can look at her face and not believe it a crime. Slaves have no rights, they have no souls.” he sneered above her and at his father in law.

He spat on Sansa’s head. “The graces made them so to serve us, they are disposable and if stringing a few hundred rats keeps that dragon whore away then so be it!”

“Stop that!” Hizdhar and Marzhar came over, pulling Marzhar away from her and helping her up. She felt a silken cloth press to her mouth and she remembered another time when blood was wiped from the corner of her mouth. The Hound. She hadn’t thought of him in so long it seemed. She wondered if he had survived the Blackwater.

“Go to your quarters,” Hizdhar commanded softly. She bowed her head and went down to the bottom of the pyramid. When she arrived many of the other slave women were in tears. Their children were taken. For those that had no children, Sansa joined them in comforting the other women as best they could that night. 

A few days later, Daenerys Targaryen arrived with her army. Many had rushed to the top of the gate, and everything that happened outside Sansa would hear about later after the city was taken as she has been shopping with her master and her duaghter at the time the Targaryen army arrived. Many of the masters caught a glimpse of the young girl who had taken Astapor and Yunkai as they sat in wicker chairs, fanned by the slaves and served fruit like they were watching an even at an turney. They watched, laughed, and mocked the Targaryen girl as the Masters of Meereen sent out a champion who had pissed in the wind at Daenerys. He was quickly killed by a sellsword that followed Princess Daenerys after and then the princess herself had spoken loudly to her audience. Not to the Masters though, but to the slaves.

She and her master were in the silk market when barrels were catapulted over the wall of the gates of Meereen. They reached them even in the market square. Sansa and everyone else screamed as the barrels flew above them and collided into the building with a thunder of wood against stone. There first thought was that they were being attacked but the buildings did not fall or the barrels burst into flame or the like. They cracked open on impact and slave collars fell on them, raining down around them. It was a message. Sansa stared at the collars at her feet and then towards the front of Meereen.

“She is here,” Sansa said in the common tongue looking at Jezheka who glared at her. She grabbed Mezzara’s hand and ordered Sansa to follow her back to the pyramid of Merreq. They waited for Jezheka’s husband and barricaded themselves in the pyramid. Not letting a soul in or out.

The next morning, the revolt began. Armed slaves began a slaughter of Masters in the streets. They suspected that some of Daenerys men must have snuck into the city, mostly like through the drainage system, and brought in the weapons. The bloodbath continued for a day and a night before the fighting slaves opened the gate for the Unsullied to sack the rest of the city. 

The Pyramid of Merreq had been broken open, slaves poured in and Jezheka screamed while Marzhar cursed them all as they were dragged out. Sansa had rushed to find Mezzara, holding her close and hiding in her workshop with her.

One of the slave women of the house of Merreq found them, a short sword in her hand. Sansa recognized her as one of the women who had her child taken to be one of the 162 crucified. She looked at Mezzara with a look of vengeance in her eyes. 

Sansa shook her head and held the child closer. There was no escape. She could try to fight her off but she had no weapon. She 

“Don’t do this, Rohsa.” Sansa spoke in Valyrian, pleading with the other women for Mezzara's life. “Leave her be. She did you no wrong.” 

She knew all too well what it was like to be punished for the actions of family. It's not fair or just and Sansa would protect Mezzara from that if she could. 

Rohsa’s face contorted with rage, tears pouring from her eyes as she glared at the cowering child and most likely thinking of her own little girl that had been taken and murdered, nailed to a wooden post. Her knuckles were bone white as she gripped the handle of the blade.

She took a step forward and Sansa held tight to Mezzara, turning her body half away from Rohsa as a shield. “I beg you, have mercy on this child. Killing her will not bring back your daughter.”

The other woman gave a roar, spittle flying from her lips, and Sansa flinched, bowing her body over Mezzara to protect her as she waited for the charge and the burning pain of the blade sinking into her. But it did not come. When Sansa looked up Rohsa was gone. Sansa sighed. She put Mezzara down and went through her workshop for something to put Mezzara in. She found a slave rag, one she had left in the room. She took it and put it over the child's head and then they left the Pyramid of Merreq and walked out into the morning sun together.

“Is my mama and papa dead?” Mezzara sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She stuck herself to the outside of Sansa's thigh and held her hand in a steel grip as they walked.

“I don’t know,” she told the little girl. A part of her hoped they were but another part would never wish that loneliness and heartache on Mezzara.

All around them slaves were cheering as masters were rounded up and herded like sheep for the slaughter. Sansa did her best to shield Mezzara’s eyes from the sight of what happened to them. Masters, men and women, being put to the sword by slaves. The former slaves attacked like ants on a grain of sugar or crumb of bread, together and in overwhelming numbers against one person. She remembered the bread riot, the rush of limbs, the spray of blood as the High Septon was torn apart and when the man who had tried to rape her was run through by the Hounds sword when he rescued her. She still had nightmares about it, she might have nightmares about this day too later

The city fell loud, with raucous cheers of ‘mhysa’ and ‘kill the masters’. When it was over, the last of the city taken under control, Daenerys Targaryen entered Meereen. They said she rode in on the back of a horse as silver as her hair and looked like a divine goddess of deliverance that had descended from the heavens to save them. She dismounted not a few feet into the city to walk the rest of the way, letting the slaves touch her as she walked past. They started throwing their collars at her feet like tribute while others held theirs above their heads for her to see. 

When Mezzara saw this she must have realized what it meant and she asked Sansa to lift her up. Sansa thought she might be frightened of the people and thought they might hurt her. So was Sansa. She held Mezzara close, pulling the cotton shawl further around Mezzara’s neck to hide that she wasn’t wearing a collar and the fine clothes she was wearing that could give her status away. The silks she wore were a dark blue, almost Tully blue. Slaves wore browns and faded pale yellows. The colors of piss and shit. If they realized she was not a slave Sansa worried what would happen to her. 

She barely felt it at first when Mezzara reached around her neck and removed the pin of her collar at the back, not until the leather band was jarred enough during her walk that it slipped off, falling to the dusty ground.

“Your free now, Sana,” Mezzara smiled at her. It was a big toothy grin with two teeth missing, having fallen out a week prior for her adult teeth to grow in. “You’re free,”

Sansa didn’t know what to say, she was still in shock, the liberation of the city happened so quickly and she had yet to truly come to terms that it was real. She just smiled back at the little girl, kissing her forehead and continued along.

Daenerys Targaryen was going to the Great Pyramind and Sansa wished to see the face of their savior.

She imagined she was quite beautiful, everyone said the Targaryen’s had all been unearthly radiant, another thing setting them apart from their fellow men besides the dragons they rode. Sansa looked to the sky, wondering if they would see the three dragons they said Princess Daenerys had. She wondered how big they were. Balerion the Black Dread had been the largest of all the Targaryen Dragons, the size of a castle with a wingspan that could shadow a whole city. She wondered how one Targaryen could control three dragons? From what she knew from her lessons a no Targaryen had ever tried to claim more than one dragon for themselves. It seemed that the relationship between a dragon rider and a dragon was a monogamous one. So what did that mean for the other two? Would they one day turn wild? Such a subject was something Bran or Arya would know more about, for they had always taken an interest in the creatures the Targaryen's controlled impressed by them. What other houses could say they could actually control their families sigil? Only the Targaryen's, that is, until their father brought back their Direwolves.

The thought of Lady still pained her. She still felt it. Something had changed irrevocably inside Sansa when Lady died.

Sansa and Mezzara made their way up the paths, Unsullied lining the way, silent and proud as they stood at attention with their spears and shields at the ready. Sansa had to push and squeeze through the crowds, at one point even needing to lift Mezzar in her arms again as not to lose her amongst all the bodies. The slaves were all chanting ‘Mysha,’ mother in old Ghiscari. Sansa would not call or think of the Targaryen as her mother, it was an odd thought as the other was not much older than Sansa herself. But she would not deny that she was a hero, the hero of Sansa, and all the other slaves she had freed from the slaver cities. She prayed that she might take her mission to Volantis next, remembering the head seamstress who had sold her, Turakina.

They are towards the back but Sansa can see the colors of the masters in the front, pushed into a pen of Unsullied, hundreds of them crammed together like they crammed their slaves to live in cellars, and dank chambers until they are near to bursting. She is too far to see their faces, to identify if amongst them are Jezheka and Marzhar. Mezzara is asking if she can see her parents. She answeres the girl honestly.

"No, I'm sorry, Mezzara." but she can see Daenerys Targaryen.

Her pale hair was like a beacon amongst the blacks and browns and dyed heads. Her skin tan like Sansa’s from traveling under the sun. She is shorter than Sansa imagined, standing between two much taller men that must be the Westorosi with her. She was waving and smiling at the now freedmen and woman who cried joyously out to her. Sansa can't help but smile at the sight of her. Then the Targaryen princess hand lowered, her face became harder and she looked down at the Masters.

Sansa pressed Mezzara’s face into her neck, scared of what she might see. The girl struggled, wanting to see more of their new queen, her fear and anxiety ebbing and becoming excited with everyone else. The masters were not cut down then and there, instead pushed and herded away down the roads they had come. The conquerer of Meereen removed herself to the Great Pyramid and Sansa wanted to follow, to tell her of her true identity and beg her to take her back home to Westeros. The crowd was too thick, too tight against each other, it was impossible to get any closer than she already was. She would most likely have to wait until Princess Daenerys left the city as she had the others, to be free of Meereen for good and finally have hope of returning to Westeros again.

Then the screaming began.

Out of the great masters taken alive, 163 would be put to the post, crucified alive with their hands pointing up the way to the Great Pyramid. Sansa felt satisfaction, hot righteousness to see these men and even some women strung up. They deserved to be punished with death for their crimes. But then she saw the face of Hazdhan Zo Loraq, Jezheka’s father. He had been a kind man who sought better treatment for slaves, who opposed the crucifixion of the children. He had been a Great Master, but he was good as much as a master could be.

Sansa had to push Mezzara’s face into her shoulder so she did not see her grandfather. The girl squirmed and struggled, complaining that Sansa was blinding her as she pulled her shawl completely over her head. Sansa didn’t look away. This was justice? It felt that way at first but as the screaming continued, the moans of agony and please for Mercy ringing in her ears and remembering that amongst the punished was a good man who wanted nothing to do with the murder of children, she started to doubt. Would her father have thought this a just punishment, he who had been charged with beheading men for selling slaves? Would Robb think this just and fair?

This was the right thing, it must be. Perhaps some did not deserve this but many of the others surely did for how they treated slaves and children. She thought of Rohsa and all the other crying women who had children taken and murdered.

Sansa had asked for fire and blood, for the Targaryen girl to burn the masters. All of them. She got what she wanted, hadn't she?

She needed to find Jezheka and Marzhar. 

She had to take care of Mezzara.

They were on the street for hours before hands snatched the girl from her and Sansa was ready to scream and fight to get the child back. Then she saw who had taken Mezzara from her.

Jezheka, her hair mussed and clothes filthy and in tatters at places glared at her vehemently. Marzhar was with her, his arms around his child and wife. He spits at Sansa’s feet.

Jezheka spoke. “If you bare my child any love and if you were grateful even once for the care and compassion my father showed you, then if what you told me in Volantis is true you will go to your Queen and you will speak favorably of us.”

It was a last and final command from her master and Sansa sneered, she wanted to argue that she owed the House of Merreq nothing but then Marzhar spoke, voice filled with hatred.

“Your dragon whore has freed you all, it will be our heads if we allowed you back. You will never return to our home. I hope you die and rot on the streets all the while remembering how good your life was with us.”

The family turned from her and Mezzara started to cry. She reached for Sansa as her mother and father began to walk away from her, crying and confused why Sansa wasn’t going back with them. She swatted her parent’s backs, she floundered in her arms, calling for Sansa.

“SANA, SANA!!” she cried big fat tears down her cheeks, hands reaching and fingers stretched for the young woman who had taught her to danced, played, and amused her, who had protected her with her own life and loved her.

“SANA!!” Sansa’s heart was breaking and she wept for the child, for the sweet girl who had been like a little sister to her. She understood now how Shae felt when she said she would have killed for Sansa. For Sansa knew now she would without a doubt to the very same for Mezzara. 

“Goodbye,” Sansa spoke through tears, a parting so softly spoken of course the girl would have not have heard it, especially over her tears. So Sansa sang. Standing in the street, alone, she sang clear and loud the Song of the Seven to carry and watch over Mezzara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took longer to post because halfway through I was having issues with deciding if wanted a more dramatic experience for Sansa in the Slave revolt or something calmer, in the end this just flowed (for me) so much better in the end.  
> Next chapter we will finally be entering the POV of Dany along with the two women meeting.


	4. The Audience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys makes a choice about what to do next after Meereen is taken and an audience is requested by a former slave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really hard for me. I still don't think I got the first meeting between Sansa and Dany right. I struggled to battle the prejudices of the history of their families with one another and making sure things weren't too aggressive on either side but still tense like they were when Dany met Tyrion for the first time. Yet it somehow turned out softer than I wanted.   
> Honestly, I hate this chapter, but any time I try to make it better it actually only gets worse so we're all stuck with this. Sorry, I know everyone had their own expectations for this first meeting and I hate to have let anyone down.

It was a difficult choice to make, to stay. But it was the right one. Daenerys was confident in that. She could not leave, not when all she would be leaving behind in her wake was death and ruin. If she took the 93 ships from the Meereenese navy to Kings Landing she would not be able to take many of the thousands upon thousands of slaves she had freed with her. They would need to be left behind and without her, and without her it would all go back to the way it was before she had come and brought freedom with fire and blood. 

What kind of ‘mother’ would that make her if she abandons her children in their infancy when they were only just learning to walk on their own? 

She promised choice, she promised freedom but if she left all she would be giving them was a drop of a great ocean before they were pulled back into the desert, bound in chains and gagged. Meereen would be taken back by the wise and great masters and everything she had done would have been only for the benefit of herself. She told Jorah she wanted to take Yunkai for the slaves, the same for Meereen, but if she didn’t cement peace and prosperity into the foundations she had uprooted then she would be no more than a Khal rather than a queen. Smashing and plundering her way through every city she came to and moving on. Ruling a city was different from leading a Khalasar, it was time she actually learned the difference. If she couldn’t control and keep a hold on Slavers Bay, three cities, she would fail with seven. 

Aegon the Conquerer was a king, his sisters queens, their children kings and queens after them. She would be a queen as well. But first, she needed to learn what it meant. She had never been a proper princess, deprived of the proper education a lady of her birth would have received to even give her fair footing in the world of monarchy. It was painful to admit, a wound to her pride. But it was true. All she ever had were the few years with Ser William Darry and then the rest she learned from her brother or picked up from those that would host them for a while. It was a miracle she knew her letters, and just barely. Viserys didn’t see any reason she would need to know how to read. She would be his queen, but only in the sense to look pretty on his arm, restore their family, and keep the Targaryen line pure once more. She was grateful to the generous men and women who believed it important for her to know her letters, who gifted her with the bare minimum of knowledge about things that her brother would have deprived her of.

She needed to grow, to learn and so did her dragons. When Aegon took Westeros with his sisters, their three dragons had been grown. Hers was still young, too young to take Westeros with as they were. She would stay and she would rule and when she left she would make sure it was only when Slavers Bay was strong enough to withstand any attacks or plots from the masters to see their cities once more in their ‘former’ glory. Otherwise, what would it say about her as a ruler?

Her ancestors’ legacy had begun in Westeros, where Aegon had brought unity and peace to seven divided kingdoms at constant war. Let hers begin in Essos, where she would end slavery for good in Slavers Bay and make the cities beautiful with fat men and happy maids with laughing children and no chains.

First, she needed to establish peace or at least order again. She decreed any further murders to be punished by the noose, looters would lose a hand and rapers their cocks. Her next council meeting focused on what could be done for the now freedmen on the streets. She outfitted mess halls to feed the former slaves and barracks to shelter them, but more would still need to be done. They could not live off free meals and public housing forever, it was not a realistic long term solution. The now freedmen had been the backbone of the economy as laborers, and goods to sell. Of course, Daenerys had no intention of selling any of her people, but she would need to establish work again amongst the Freedmen to get the city running once more. Daario advised that the slave trade and the fighting pits were the cities biggest taxables. If slavery was outlawed they would need to either open the fighting pits, and soon, or find another valuable good to market. The city would go broke sooner rather than later if ships stopped making the voyage to Meereen once they heard slavery was outlawed. It was a big problem.

She needed a better council if she wanted solutions to these problems. Jorah and Ser Barristan were seasoned knights, soldiers. Daario was a scoundrel, but clever, yet she needed more than them if she were going to rule Meereen. The Iron Throne had a small council of no less than seven advisors to help see to the needs of the realm and she would need a strong council just the same for Slavers Bay. But who would fill the seats?  She felt strongly that she was going to need a former slave of Meereen, someone with an inside perspective and knowledge of the desires of her now freedmen. But the masters too needed to be handled as well. She could not kill them all. She would need someone to help manage them, keep them in line with her new laws. Ser Barristan and Jorah agreed. The issue was choosing the  _ right  _ people.

Things were at peace now, but it wasn’t going to last, she could feel it. She needed this council, she needed a plan for the future of Slavers Bay. Perhaps she might start by changing its name. Names had power. Calling it Slavers Bay would only be a sign that nothing was really changing. She was debating with her council on what they might call her new territory when they were interrupted.

“Pardon, your grace, a woman is seeking an audience with you,” Missandei told her after another whispered in her ear with the news. “She is Westerosi,”

Daenerys looked sharply at Jorah and Ser Barristan, both looking as surprised as she was. They had there fair share of freedmen and nobles asking for an audience, and they would get the chance. She was planning to start taking audiences in a fortnight after some matters were settled about their stay and how she was exactly planning to rule these people. What were her values, her goals? Knowing these she would be able to adequately face the issues of her people and how she was going to solve them as best she could. She had plans to send footmen around the city to make the formal announcement and who to see to schedule an audience. Normally this would have been explained to anyone currently trying to speak with her, but they must have realized the importance of a Westerosi asking for her. It was good that she was told, she was curious and to be honest a bit worried. Who on earth could it be? Someone wishing to be allies she hoped. Dorne perhaps?

“What name did she give?” Ser Barristan asked Missandei, composure regained.

“Sansa Stark, Ser.” Jorah and Barristan looked at each other with even further shock and Daenerys bristled at ‘Stark’. Eddard Stark was the usurper's right hand, his loyalist dog who had helped tear her family for their seat of power and murder her brother Rhaegar. Ser Barristan had told them both were dead now, Robert Baratheon from a Boar hunt gone wrong, and Eddard Stark’s head was cut off by the usurpers’ heir Joffrey. Good, she had alighted at that news. They got what they deserved.

“You said Joffrey was murdered at his wedding. His wedding to who?” Barristan asked Jorah, white brows raised and waiting.

“Margaery Tyrell, why does it matter?” her bear answered with a frown.

“Because when I left Kings Landing it was Sansa Stark who was betrothed to Joffrey,” he told the other knight, wrinkles more prominent when he was in thought. Yet it was clear he was in as well of shape as a young man half his age.

“So she was put aside for a better marriage alliance,” Jorah shrugged with offhanded assumption. “It’s happened before, and it’s not like it would add any further insult to the North after Joffrey took Ned Starks head,”

“But why is she  _ here _ ?” Barristan focused on. “She would be too valuable a hostage against the Northern revolt to let her go. How did she escape Kings Landing and why of all places did she come here to Essos rather than find her way back to her brother?”

“Perhaps her brother sent her as an emissary, looking for an alliance between Stark and Targaryen to defeat the Lannisters?” Jorah added in, it wasn’t that absurd of an idea. Possible with the war in Westeros right now.

These were all very good questions.

“Why don’t we just ask her ourselves,” Daario suggested with a roll of his shoulders, picking an olive from the silver bowl in the middle of the table and popping it in his mouth.

Dany was open to the suggestion. It was a more direct approach to finding out the truth.

“Tell me what you know of this Sansa Stark,” she looked to Ser Barristan and Ser Jorah. Ser Jorah for he was of the North and Ser Barristan because he must have seen the girl to some extent when in the capital.

“She was a girl of seven when I went into exile, only met her twice. When the Lords were called to celebrate her birth and later during a visit to Winterfell when she was five. She was a sweet, dutiful little lady. Perfect manners. Looked like her mother.” was all Jorah had to offer her, which was not much help at all in predicting what they could expect and how to handle their guest.

She looked to Barristan for more.

“A bit naive when I saw her last. She seemed to have her head in the clouds when it came to Joffrey. Saw him as this dashing, handsome prince and caught up in the excitement of one-day being queen. She was a child, no schemes, just fantasies.” he defended her character, what of it he knew. “Courteous and polite to everyone she made acquaintances with.”

He took on a more somber expression as he thought of something else.

“What else?” she pressed for more when she saw that look on his face.

“They wouldn’t let her visit her father after he was imprisoned but she was there when he was made to confess his crimes in front of the Sept of Baelor.” he explained to Daenerys, “I was in the city still after being dismissed, watching from the crowd. It seemed that Joffrey promised mercy and then he cut off her father’s head. I remember how she screamed and begged for her fathers’ life while being restrained by a Kings guard from interfering. Horrible sight. The people had cheered while she cried.”

He gave and empathetic tut. He was a kind man, she was realizing more and more, truly noble. He was haunted, she could see that clearly. From his past choices and the guilt that came with it perhaps. But she trusted he would shield her back, and his council was useful.

Dany thought of her own father, a man she never knew who was cut down by someone who was meant to protect him from all harm. Ser Barristan had told her about her father, told her about her brother. What they both did to bring war down on their family’s heads. But that did not mean she forgave her family’s enemies. She simply understood them now.

“Your grace, if I may say something about the Lady Stark,” Missandei spoke and Dany smiled. 

“Of course, what is it?” she encouraged her to go on.

“I was told, the Lady Stark was thought a recent freedman when she asked for an audience,” she told them. “She is disheveled, wears the garb of a slave, and there is a pale ring around her neck the same width of a slave collar.” 

“A slave!?” the Westerosi of the room gasped. How did a noblewoman like Sansa Stark end up a slave?

Daenerys had enough of mere guessing and speculating amongst her council. She wanted explanations and answers. And she wanted them now.

“I will see her,” she nodded to Missandei who bowed her head and left to retrieve the girl.

Daenerys left after from the room to go to the audience chamber, Grey Worm leading the way with Daario and Jorah and Barristan guarding her rear. They talked more amongst themselves, ser Jorah considered the girl might be an imposter, Ser Barristan thought the fool Joffrey might have actually sold the girl to someone for help in his war. That meant they would need to find out who he was no allied with if that was the case. Someone in Meereen? And what would Meereen want to do with Westeros? 

There was also still the possibility she was sent to Essos by her brother to speak as an ambassador of sorts and the Lady Sansa got separated from her guards and enslaved while on a diplomatic errand. Daenerys thought about these things too as they were said. Pondered on them carefully. This would be the first time she met another woman from Westeros. She was surrounded by men but for Missandei. She often missed her Dothraki handmaids, missed Irri the most. She still felt guilt over her death, that she had died protecting her dragons, that she died alone when Dany had sworn to protect her. She thought of Missandei. The same would not happen to her. She would make sure of it.

The men grew silent when they arrived at the audience chamber, taking their positions as Dany took her place at the alter, her marble bench cold under her. She’s wearing her long, white silk dress. Her hair is done perfectly, each braid was a representation of the battles she has won, and each one perfectly looped and pinned in place at the back of her head. She wondered how Westerosi women wore their hair, what style of dress and colors, did they prefer silk or velvet. These were simple thoughts, ones that showed she was still but a young girl with a young girl’s fascinations and interests. Though she would honestly admit she much preferred some of the comforts of her Dothraki garb, soft breeches to a flowing skirt or a loosely painted vest over a silky tunic.

She made sure her back was straight and head held high and queenly when Missandei entered first, coming up the steps to join her. They exchanged a look and Missandei motioned for their guest to be allowed in.

The girl that entered was younger than her but taller. She looked nothing like what Dany had imagined a highborn woman from Westeros to look like. She was thin, sunkissed and her dark hair was braided hastily over her shoulder. The light from the high windows of the audience hall glared at the top of her head and she could clearly see the fiery line of copper of her roots that contrasted with the brown. She had been dying her hair for some reason, to disguise herself? Viserys had always been too proud of their Valyrian heritage to ever consider dying either one of their hair while on the run.

She wore a shabby dress with braided straps over her shoulders and a scarf looped around a bronze hoop around her waist. A common fashion in Meereen, and it was no doubt the attire of a slave. Squinting, Dany saw the suspicious tan line around the girl’s neck that Missandei mentioned. And then there was her face. She was beautiful, high cheekbones, straight nose, but her face was bruised and her lip cut open. Someone had hurt her, and recently.

“You are in the presence of Daenerys Targaryen---” Missandei began her long list of titles in the Common Tongue. The girl curtsied low and when she stood and looked at her a pair of blue eyes looked back at her. Vivid blue, that made her think of the blue diamonds a woman in Qarth had worn. The woman swallowed and looked nervously behind Dany at Jorah and Ser Barristan. She must recognize them both, perhaps Ser Barristan more. Jorah was dressed in his armor, the sigil of House Mormont on his chest. From that, she could assume who he was even if she did not know his face.

Dany looked to Ser Barristan, for a hint that he recognized the girl before him as Sansa Stark, having been the only one amongst them to have the seen the girl and most recently. He studied the girl’s face carefully, her high cheekbones, the shape of her brows, the line of her nose, and the shape of her chin. He glanced at her and he nodded, confirming that this girl was who she said.

“Your grace,” the woman’s’ voice was hoarse and she noticed, looking embarrassed as she licked her lips to help wet her mouth. “Thank you for granting me an audience, I am--”

“Lady Sansa of House Stark,” Daenerys finished for her, voice hard. “I was told,” 

“I must admit, I am surprised to meet yet another one of my subjects on this side of the sea. Especially when I was under the impression you were a hostage of war in Kings Landing under the Bastard King Joffrey,” she tried to sound more knowledgable of the situation than she was. She had to appear wise, informed, and strong.

“I was your grace,” Sansa’s eyes once more flitted to Ser Barristan. She looked almost afraid of him.

“And before that, you were betrothed to this Joffrey,” she said in accusing tone, her prejudices slipping through the cracks. “You presumed to make yourself queen after your father helped usurp mine.”

This was the daughter of one of the men that destroyed her family and now standing before her that fact reemerged itself to Dany, it made her angry. She knew it was not right, for if she judged this girl for the actions of her father what reason did anyone else have for not judging Dany for the actions of hers. The Mad King, a named Ser Barristan said her father had rightfully earned.

The Northern girl pushed back her shoulders, her blue eyes narrowing in a sharp glare, jaw hardening in indignation.

“Your father took a father and brother from mine. Then asked for my father's head as well” she said, quick, rash, and obviously regretting it after she said it from the way she flinched back as if waiting for one of the unsullied to strike her for speaking out. 

“I am not my father,” Dany said to her, calm, cold almost but her eyes did hold an apology in them, a sincere one.

“I know,” Sansa said with a tiny, barely-there smile. “You’re much prettier I’m sure,”

The grin was a surprise to herself, as was the small chuckle that escaped her at the comment.

“Thank you,” she said to the attempt at flattery.

Sansa went quiet, somber and when she looked at Dany again her eyes were mournful.

“And if it pleases you, the gods old and new saw fit to punish me and my father for the sins we committed,” there was a haunting look in her angry blue eyes, one Dany had seen before in her own when she caught a glimpse of herself in a looking glass.“For my father’s crime of helping Robert Baratheon and for my own greed and vanity for coveting being Joffrey’s queen, for this he lost his head I have been made to suffer ever since,”

Dany had never felt that way, never thought she lived her life the way she had because the gods were punishing the children for the sins of the father. Viserys had always made it clear whose fault it was they lived how they lived. The usurper and his dogs. She had been made to believe all the terrible things said about her father and brother were slander and lies. That was until Ser Barristan told her the truth. Her father was an evil man, her brother a kidnapper, and a rapist despite all the lovely things he had to say about Rhaegar. 

“There is good and evil on every side of every war ever fought,” Jorah had told her that. Though Robert Baratheon was wrong to usurp her family, so was her father and brother wrong for what they had done.

Her heart extended out to Sansa, to this weary who had crossed the sea to be free. 

When Dany spoke next, she made sure that she didn’t sound condescending but inviting and gentle. “Tell me of your suffering,”

Sansa Stark started to cry then. Perhaps it was the softness of Dany’s voice, the kindness in her eyes, but it broke the damn that Sansa had been desperately trying to keep up on her emotions. She cracked and this girl, not much younger than herself began to pour out her heart to Dany.

“It was awful, your grace. I begged mercy for my father and then Joffrey killed him anyway. After, I was made to look upon his head on a spike as it rotted in the sun. I was beaten and humiliated by kings guard in front of the court at Joffrey’s orders every time my brother won a battle.” at this Dany could not help but look at her own Queens’s guard, and she wondered, how truly righteous and noble these knights were if they would beat a defenseless girl at the order of their king. If she ordered him, would Ser Barristan do the same to Sansa right then and there as well? No, she didn’t believe he would. Or at least she didn’t want to believe he would yet he somehow didn’t look surprised to hear Sansa’s grievance about his former brothers.

She looked back at the Lady Sansa and motioned for her to continue.

“I was mocked and tested at every turn by his mother, Queen Cersei, who I had been naive to admire. I did everything I could to survive, said awful things about my family, got on my knees and begged, did everything I was told. It didn’t matter. They still hurt me. When I finally thought I was free of them, the two people who have made my life hell since my father’s murder, I was sold into slavery.” her eyes grew puffy from her crying, clean streaks made by her tears lining her dirty face. 

“That is until you came, your grace,” Sansa looked at her with the same admiration that Missandei and any other she had freed looked at her with. “I thought I would be a slave for the rest of my days and then I heard of you, of what you did in Astapor and Yunkai and I waited and I prayed for your victory over Meereen.”

Dany couldn’t help but give her an emotional smile. “I thank you for your prayers, my lady,”

Sansa nodded, starting to wipe away her tears. She had calmed down now.

“You may be pleased to hear, that the bastard King Joffrey is dead. He was poisoned at his own wedding,” telling her this was a test, to see how she would react. They waited and watched her carefully.

Sansa’s face was blank for a moment, shocked of course. Then she brought her hands to her face, covering it. Her shoulders shook and Jorah leaned over to whisper that perhaps the girl still loved the boy despite what he had done, that they shouldn’t trust her. Then Sansa threw back her head and she was laughing. Her arms came to wrap around her waist and she seemed to struggle to keep standing as she cackled almost madly. 

“I am sorry, your grace,” Sansa wheezed, sucking in a breath and trying to stifle her joyous laughter, a grin on her face. “The relief I feel, to hear this news, that justice was done….”

Dany only nodded, she felt the same satisfaction when she learned of the Usurpers death. She had gone to her tent, dismissed everyone, and giggled herself like a madwoman as she poured her fill of wine and ate in celebration to the ignoble stags death. By a boar of all things. An animal killed by another animal.

When Sansa sobered she looked concerned as she asked after her brother if they had heard any news of him at all. Jorah shook his head. No word on the Young Wolf. Sansa sighed but Dany thought she should take no news as good news.

Ser Barristan made a subtle move for her attention, asking permission to speak. She granted it with a nod.

“How was it that you escaped Kings Landing, my lady?” Ser Barristan asked.

“My handmaid, she knew of a secret passage out of the Red Keep.” Sansa wiped her eyes, looking embarrassed now at her open weeping. “When Stannis Baratheon attacked from the Blackwater, she got me out during the distraction and had bought me safe passage to Essos.”

“Alone?” he questioned and she nodded. 

“There was no one else in Kings Landing I could trust, but her,” she answered and Dany could imagine that to be true enough from what she had told them.

“The ship took you all the way here, to Meereen?” Ser Barristan asked, trying to understand her voyage, trying to find holes in her story maybe.

“No. I thought the ship would sail for Braavos but its course was to Volantis.” she told them and they could see she was remembering it all.

“I sold everything valuable on my person when I arrived and as soon as I could, I wrote a letter and paid a messenger to take it to my brother. I sent two letters but he never wrote back and no one came for me,”

“And how did you manage to get sold into slavery?” Ser Jorah spoke without permission and it earned him a glare from both Dany and Sansa.

“I found work at a small sewing house in Volantis, for two months I was there when a noblewoman of Meereen came into the shop one day, she liked the garments I had made and was impressed with my skill. She asked to buy me along with the dresses,” as she recounted the tale her tears returned but this time she tried to compose herself more about it though it was obviously a struggle.

“I tried to tell them who I really was, who my brother was thinking it could save me, but they didn’t care. I’m nothing here,” she told them, eyes downcast. She was a highborn, a princess some might consider, but much like Dany had been in Essos she was known one, she had no fortune, no influence, no guards or friends. Their stories were not so different. “They put chains on my wrist and ankles and I was taken from the sewing house to Meereen.”

“How long? How long have you been a slave?” Dany asked a hot fury in her belly and chest that she felt when she heard of any slave’s story.

Sansa was calmer now, her crying ceasing and she remembered her lessons and made back straight and dignified. “Not very long, less than three months. Long enough to know but still not fully understand.” 

She was humble enough to admit, though Dany had no doubt of her trials and hardships as a slave. “And I was treated as well as any slave could be.”

Dany knew not to take that to mean much, she had seen the treatment of slaves. Heard stories from Missandei.

“And who were your masters?” Dany wanted to know, needed to know. 

“Those of the House of Merreq, your grace,” said Sansa, and then she looked up with a desperate stare. “They have a daughter, Mezzara, she is a sweet girl. I ask if any action is ever needed to be taken against house Merreq you consider her. I care for her very deeply,”

“I would never hurt a child,” she assured the lady, almost hissing at her. The assumption felt like a slap.

“Of course, your grace,” Sansa bowed her head, almost apologetic for any offense she caused.

“Now that I have heard your story, tell me what you wish for me to do for you,” they had gotten their answers as to why and how Lady Sansa came to be in Meereen, now it was time to address why she had asked for an audience.

“I ask that you allow me to join you when you leave Meereen,” she said to Dany. “I want to go home,”

_ So do I, _ Dany thought but she had chosen to make a commitment to her freedmen by staying in Meereen to rule. 

“Please, I will speak to my brother on your behalf, make him see reason, and bend the knee to you. I won’t fail, please, just take me home!” she was starting to beg now, getting on her knees and clasping her hands as if Dany was one of her gods.

“I’m sorry, but I will not be leaving Meereen for some time. I have chosen to stay and rule properly as Queen here,” she told the other. “But that does not mean I am not still the rightful Queen of Westeros, I have every intention of returning home and taking what is mine,”

Sansa nodded in understanding yet she appeared to be fighting an internal battle before she spoke next.

“Then I ask for just one ship, one ship to take me back. I will do all I promise. I will tell Robb of what you’ve done in Essos, of your bravery and strength, of your good heart and make him swear to bend the knee on your arrival. He will defeat the Lannisters for you and---” she was cracking again, tears springing to her eyes but she didn’t let these ones fall so easily. “Please, I--”

Dany stood from her bench and walked down the many steps until she reached Sansa who was hunched over on the floor. Jorah and Ser Barristan made to follow her, but she held up her hand, telling them to stay where they are.

She touched Sansa’s shoulders and helped her stand. Their height difference was even more noticeable when they stood facing each other, she actually had to look up at her.

“I’ll take you home,” she promised, looking deep into the eyes of the other. “But I need time, can you give me that?”

Sansa nodded and Dany awarded her with a smile. “You will stay here, with me while I make plans for your return,”

“You honor me, your grace” Sansa blushed and smiled sweetly. Dany brushed back a stray hair from Sansa’s face and stepped back.

She told Missandei to show, Sansa, to a comfortable room and to have a bath drawn for her, food prepared and a more appropriate dress found for their guest. Her handmaid and advisor readily went to the task, coming down the stone steps and asking to be followed with a pleasant smile.

When Missandei and Sansa were gone, Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan questioned her choice. Jorah wasn’t so sure they could trust Lady Sansa and Dany accused him of having more prejudice against the Starks then herself, smirking at him in a teasing manner. Ser Barristan worried about sending Sansa on her own back to Westeros. 

“I promised her I would take her home, I didn’t say when,” she reminded them both and agreed they needed time to measure if they could trust her enough to send back to The Starks. It could be shown as an act of goodwill and possibly win the North over from there, but Sansa had also mentioned a secret passage out of the Red Keep. They could use that information.

Daario volunteered to confirm her enslavement under the house Merreq, make sure her story was true. Them, most likely trying to make her jealous, Daario remarked on the beauty of the lady Stark. Dany rolled her eyes and Ser Barristan was quick to remind the sellsword that Lady Sansa was of noble birth in Westeros and now and honored guest of their queen. If they were to return her to her brother then they couldn’t let someone like Daario tarnish her.

“She was a slave, Ser, and beautiful. It wouldn’t be a surprise if her master’s husband or another had her already,” Daario reminded them before he left, and that thought made Dany almost shudder. She knew she would need to speak to Sansa privately, once she was comfortable. She was sure there were things that she would not have admitted to her while in the presence of men. She needed to know for certain what condition she had arrived at them in. She hated it, to think that her brother would not take her back if she had been raped, but it was a possibility. Men were so stupid and ignorant. A woman was more than the value of her virtue.

This changed things, there was no doubt about it. But how much?

“It will be better to have her close,” on that they all agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate this chapter so much.  
> Sansa's relationship with Dany starts much as it did in a sense with Margaery. Sansa is desperate to go home, to trust and believe in someone. Dany in this scenario is Margaery, she gives Sansa comfort and hope. And later, for Dany, Sansa will be someone who connects her to the childhood she was robbed of. With Sansa, Dany can feel like a young girl rather than a queen all the time. And in time, they will fall in love.  
> Also, I am not trying to villainize Jorah in any way, but he is a suspicious person and this is the daughter of the man who wanted his head.


	5. Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some sweet girl time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I realize I haven't said this but thank you to every single one of you that comments and offers kudos. On bad days, that's my driving force, that is what gets me to sit down, focus, chug my coffee, and write another chapter.  
> And with everything happening in the world, the bad days are starting to outnumber the good. But we persevere, we make things happen and we need to always hold on to the hope and the gut feeling that it will get better.  
> So here is a good, light-hearted chapter for you with our two favorite girls just being young and carefree over dinner.

“We should send word to Robb Stark, we can use this to our advantage for an alliance just as Lady Sansa said,” Ser Barristan advised her after they retreated back to her temporary council room, adjacent to her own chambers at the top of the Great Pyramid. They were still discovering and mapping all the rooms of the structure.

Dany turned away from the view of the open sky out the balcony of the chambers, looking at her advisors. “She said she sent him a message already,” 

“That she waited for two months for her brother. Does it really take that long?” she asked, wondering if this Robb didn’t care as much for his sister as his father had his. How could he just leave his little sister alone in Essos for so long, without sending a single word back to her? But then, Dany was all too familiar with heartless brothers who only cared about their desires and little for their own sister's happiness and safety.

“It can, especially during war,” Jorah gave her an honest answer. “They don’t have ravens in Essos, any message from or to across the Narrow sea is done by footmen. They can be bribed to give or lose their missives, they could be killed on the way, it’s possible that Lady Sansa’s message never reached him,”

She gave shallow little nods of understanding. He made sense. So how could they assure that Robb Stark got the message this time? How did they even know he was still alive. Jorah for the majority had been her source of information, having channels in markets and such bringing news to him of Westeros.

“I need to know more,” she told him, and she could see he immediately knew what she meant.

“I’ll see what I can find out, then the issue is finding someone strong and trustworthy enough to get a message to Lord Stark,” 

Barristan agreed.

“One of us will have to go,” he told Jorah.

“We are the only two that know Westeros and can navigate the terrain and people without drawing too much attention,” he told her bear, eyes suddenly sharper than ever. But it was only directed at Jorah. “It will have to be one of us,”

Jorah for the first time didn’t seem to be happy at the prospect of going home at long last.

“Might have to be me, don’t know how well Robb Stark will receive you when his father tried to take your head once,” Barristan gave the other a teasing smirk and Jorah’s blue eyes glared at him.

“None of that matters if Robb Stark is dead. We need to know where he is and how his efforts against the Lannisters are fairing,” she said to them curtly. “If an alliance with him is even worth it,”

“I believe it is, your grace,” said Barristan. “The North, for the most part, has always minded their own, but when called on they are deadly. If you want all seven kingdoms, you’ll have to bring them into your fold eventually.”

“Robb Stark is called King in the North, he rejected rejoining my kingdoms under any of the false kings so why can we trust he will fall in line with me?” she asked them, twirling the double pearl ring around her finger. The only jewelry of her mothers left. She had hidden it from Viserys all these years. She told him she had lost it when he looked to sell it. He had been furious of course, it was the first time he had hit her. It had broken him when they sold her crown and it was all the more reason Dany had clung to keep the ring. 

“What if his sister has no sway over him at all? It seems to me he has made no compromises for her before so why would he now if we did reach out to him and tell him she was with us?” her questioning stumped them and they seemed to be at odds as they thought about this further. 

“It’s true when Ned Stark was first arrested, Cersei had her write a letter to her brother telling him to come to Kings Landing and Bend the knee, to reassure the crown of the North’s fealty,” Ser Barristan recalled. “And what did the boy do? Declare war,”

They thought long and hard about Sansa Stark’s true importance to her brother and thus to them. 

“Did you ever meet Robb Stark?” Dany asked Ser Barristan who gave her a nod. He then told her of what he knew of the boy, that he was respectful, excellent in swordplay, clever and personable or so he seemed from the short time he was in his acquaintance him when they went to Winterfell to collect Ned Stark as Hand of the King. That turned to conversation about Ned Stark himself.

Ser Barristan has more than a few kind and respectful things to say about the man who had helped overthrow her family at the side of Robert Baratheon. He told her, and Jorah confirmed it, the shock and disgust that Ned Stark expressed when Tywin Lannister laid the bodies of her niece and nephew at Robert’s feet. He had demanded his friend punish Tywin, for it was his men who had committed such a heinous crime, roared that things were never meant to go so far.

She learned more about the rebellion and the Usurper and his dogs’ relationship than she ever had that day. That though they had been innocent youths in the Eyrie her father had called for their heads after king Rickard and Brandon Stark than she ever had that day but none of it dimmed the hot ember of her bitter fury for those that had a part in destroying the life she would have had, who had murdered her family. But she would not direct that flame on Lady Sansa. She was as innocent as Daenerys had been. She would not punish her further for the crimes of her father and she would not punish her for her brothers’ open rebellion either. She was not Joffrey Baratheon.

“Find out what you can, then we will resume this conversation,” she told them and dismissed them with a turn of her back, going out to the wide balcony.

She grinned when her dragons flew by, chasing each other in the air. They loved to perch atop the pyramid where the bronze harpy had once stood, gazing out over Meereen much the same way she did. She wondered what they thought about when they did. Dragons were intelligent, yet Jorah said that they cannot be tamed even by their mother. Their wills were too great, their stubbornness like that of any animals, but they were intelligent enough to be trained. It all seemed so contradictory. But she worried, she thought of how Drogon had snapped at her when she tried to calm him down when sharing food with his brothers. She would need to start focusing more on their training, their commands. They were protective, which was good, but she couldn’t have them hurting people mindlessly.

There were so many issues that needed her attention. She had barely begun but a part of her already wanted to rest. Was this how Aegon the First felt?

When she looked back down at the city, the wide brick streets, the temples, granaries, hovels, gardens, and pyramids, at the dark dots that looked like ants she wondered if this was what the gods saw when they found themselves bored enough to look down from their heavenly thrones?

She looked towards the pewter sea and tilted her head up into the breeze, hair tickling as it lifted and twirled around her cheeks. 

She felt so lonely.

“Your grace,” Dany turned and went back in at the call of Missandei’s sweet accent.

“Lady Sansa has been settled in and as ordered was bathed, fed and dressed,” she reported. “I saw to her myself,”

Dany smiled at the efforts of the scribe. It had not been necessary for her to personally see to all the needs of their guest, just to make sure they were ordered and done, “That was kind of you,”

Missandei asked if she would like her to pour her some wine. Dany didn’t refuse, accepting, and then inviting Missandei to sit with her and report in detail what she had observed of Sansa Stark. Of course, Missandei would never refuse her and so she told her everything.

Sansa Stark was polite to all those that attended her, shy almost when it was time to undress for her bath despite being a lady who had in the past been attended to much the same by handmaids. She was thin, Missandei told her, not starved but not well fed either. She was marked too, on her back and the backs of her thighs.

“Scars you mean?” Dany asked for more elaboration. The other woman nodded.

“When I asked, she said the older marks were from swords. She was beaten with the flat of swords but there were times the steel would cut her. The fresher marks are from a whipping by her former masters,” she told her as it had been explained to her by Sansa. 

“And her face, from her masters too?” she asked Missandei, taking a sip of her wine to help settle her anger.

Missandei nodded. “When she heard about the crucified children she vomited and the husband of the woman who bought her hit her and made her lick up her sick,”

Dany swallowed her own vomit as she heard this, disgusted and enraged. She drank the rest of her wine in two gulps.

“And did her master's husband or any other force himself ever on her?” she asked, this was important politically as well.

“I do not believe so, your grace,” Missandei answered honestly though with no certainty. “She did not mention any such violation and I did not think to ask, my apologies, your grace,”

Dany shook her head and smiled. “You have nothing to apologize for, I did not exactly give you a list of questions to ask her,”

Missandei looked relieved and Dany asked her if there was anything else she thought she should know about the girl. Her handmaid said that Lady Sansa understood and could speak Valyrian, not well but enough to survive and understand the orders of her masters. Missandei had given a tiny laugh telling her that Sansa didn’t have the same tongue for Valyrian as Dany did. The praise made Dany happy. Perhaps she did not have the education a lady such as Sansa Stark had but that did not mean she was a dolt.

Lastly, she told Dany that she had made sure to ask Missandei numerous times to offer Daenerys her thanks for her accommodations, clothes, and her food. She obviously understood whose good graces she was reliant on. That would make some things easier. She also mentioned that she had asked Missandei how long she thought it would take for Dany to get her home.

“I answered that you have always been kind and true to your word, she just need be patient,” Missandei told her honestly and that earned her another smile for Dany. Dany asked her then about Naath again, about the trees and the birds and the people. They talked about home for some hours just the two of them. They talked about Gods too. The people of Naath worshiped the Lord of Harmony, the only true God who created all, who had always been and always would be.

Dany repeated what Viserys told her of the Gods in Westeros, of the Seven Gods of the Faith. The Father, The Mother, The Warrior, The Smith, The Maiden, The Crone, and The Stranger. Viserys said that some believed the seven were but facets of a single god. As a child, it had seemed very confusing to her, but Viserys always said how important the Seven were, that their family had worshipped the Seven alongside the Westerosi since the Iron Throne was made. Aegon had been anointed in Old Town by the High Septon and Aegon had chosen to date the beginning of his reign from then on. Dany assumed when she took the Iron Throne she would be expected to pray and follow the values of the Faith as well. It would be a wise thing to do. The reach of the High Septon and Faith extended all over Westeros as the primary religion of the realm but in the North, having their support would be paramount to the success of her rule.

But Dany wasn’t in Westeros now, she was in Meereen and she realized she might need to consider the impact of the Gods of Ghis. Toppling the Harpy was one thing but destroying a religion was another. She asked Missandei to tell her everything she knew about the Meereenese gods and their traditions. If she was planning to rule, it was something she should know and expected would come up at some point.

Daario returned with a confirmation of Sansa’s stay and position with the House of Merreq, the family insisted they treated her well, said they had no clue who she really was, and made excuse after excuse for themselves to try and stave off their new queens’ wrath. Dany rolled her eyes. She had already believed Sansa after what Missandei had told her but it was good to know for sure as well now.

“The little girl asked after her, gave me this to give to ‘Sana’. Apparently, that was the name she was going by,” he took out a piece of cloth with a clumsily stitched flower and showed it to her. “Told me to tell Lady Sansa how good she’s been and asked me to pass along that message if that’s why she hadn’t come back yet,”

Dany’s heart turned to mush as she imagined the scene that must have taken place. How the little girl might have cried as she asked after the slave she so loved. She remembered how she had cried herself when Lord William Darry died. She hadn’t realized what happened, that he was dead. She had cried and begged, promised she would be good if only he would wake up.

“What did you say to her?” Dany asked with a sympathetic swallow.

Daario shrugged. “I told her that ‘Sana’ was an honorary guest of her majesty, if she wished to see her then her parents just need to bring her to you for a visit,”

It was presumptive of him, but Dany wouldn’t deny the visit lest she had a good reason. Now they would just need to wait to see if the parents gave into the child’s desire to see her ‘Sana’ again.

She asked after how things were in the streets and Daario advised her that it was quite, for now. The Unsullied were patrolling, not much but a few petty thieves to be found, but otherwise, they were all basking in their newfound freedom while the nobles hid in their palaces and pyramids trying to figure out what they should do now their slaves were taken. Daario for the umptieth time flirted dangerously with her, bringing her some flowers and fruit that caught his eye at the market and making small talk to stay in her company for as long as he could, always blunt with her about his opinions if he had one to give.

“So what’s the plan with the redhead?” he asked her and she side-eyed him before telling him about her conversation with Jorah and Ser Barristan.

“Well, if her brother doesn’t want her someone else will. Beautiful thing like that,” he said once more trying to make her jealous perhaps. She saw right through him, and when she gave him a look that told him she knew what he was doing they both shared a smirk. She wasn’t completely immune to his charms as hard as she tried to hide it. She did find him attractive, upsettingly so on particularly stressful days.

“And if her brother dies, is she still any use to you?” he asked her, serious yet looking as relaxed as one could, stroking the valley between the thighs of the golden woman of his dagger’s hilt.

“As much as me when my own brother died. She’ll be in the right to inherit Winterfell,” she explained, elaborating that the North was also the biggest of the seven Kingdom. 

“If he died, wouldn’t that make her a queen too since her brother is being called ‘king’ right now?”

Dany frowned, having not thought of it that way. If the North was that desperate for independence from her throne they could name Sansa Stark queen in the North if she brought Sansa back to Westeros. That is, of course, her brother was dead or died before they arrived.

“Win her to your side. Shouldn’t be hard,” Daario advised as if reading her mind. “If her brother is dead, make sure her loyalty is to you before his cause. So if you take her back, no matter what those lords say or want she’ll make sure to stick by you and make no attempt to collect a crown of her own,”

That did make the most sense, and it would guarantee that the North would be in her fold when she went back to Westeros. If Robb Stark was dead, she would grant Sansa the title of Lady Paramount of the North. It wasn’t far off for what she had been thinking either, as she knew it was important to gain the woman’s trust and keep her close. She was considering making her a lady in waiting for herself. She heard her mother had a small number of them, a dornish princess and Joanna Lannister. As did many a queen before she had such companions. It was the surest way of binding Sansa to her to some degree and honoring her status so as not to offend her. 

When it was time for supper, Dany decided to share the mealtime with her new guest and had Missandei pass the command along to have her meal served to Lady Sansa’s room. It seemed only good manners as a host to check in personally how she was settling in. 

When she arrived Sansa was glowing in the early evening light coming into her room. She was sitting, quietly looking out at the small balcony attached to her bed-chamber. She looked wistful and deep in thought. Her face was clean and Dany better noticed her freckles now, like a constellation of stars on her cheeks. She was wearing one of Missandei’s dresses, for the time being, a blue, silky gown with a metal collar that held it up. Missandei was the closest in height to the girl, but not that close, The dress stopped a few inches above her ankles and she wore soft leather sandals painted silver. Her hair had been brushed and braided to look like Dany’s own. 

Had she asked her hair to be done so in an attempt at flattery through imitation or had the handmaids simply not thought of any other way to style her hair?

Whatever the reason, she did look lovely.

Sansa was startled when Dany entered. She quickly rose from her seat and offered a deep curtsy as the servants moved around Dany, entering with platters of food and crystal jugs of wine, juice, and sweetened water. Setting the small table in Sansa’s room with cobber plates and utensils.

“Your grace?” Sansa asked, confused as she looked at the servants do their work.

“I thought it would be nice to get to know one another over a meal,” she offered a simple explanation, walking over to the balcony and just noticing that her children were flying about the pyramid again. Sansa followed her.

“I can’t believe they're real,” she said to Dany as she came up shyly next to her. “I heard that you had dragons, I looked for them in the sky when the city was taken but to actually see them...”

Dany smirked, pleased with the awe in the other’s voice in regards to her children. Their scales had a shimmer to them in the dying sunlight.

“I feel the same way now as I did when my father brought our direwolf pups home. For hundreds of years, not a single direwolf had been seen south of the Wall. And he brought us home one for each of us.” she said wistfully and sad too. “I named mine Lady,”

She too could recall the elation, the shock, the wonder when she first beheld her children. Their small glittering bodies seeking out hers, curling around and pressing close. She had known, felt the life in the stones that they hatched from. But to actually see them, cradle them in her arms as she would have her Rhaego had he lived, was beyond all expectation. She still felt it when she saw them in flight.

“A sweet name,” Dany told her, and before she could ask what happened to her direwolf Sansa was asking her a question.

“Do they have names yet?” Sansa asked, eyes big and excited to know. “Queen Alysanne’s dragon was named Silverwing, her sister Rhaena’s dragon was Dreamfyre and queen----”

She looked abashed, suddenly embarrassed and Dany found it sweet how quickly she could get into a subject.

“Do you know much about dragons?” Dany asked her, almost hoping there was something she could tell her that Dany didn’t already know. All she had were Visery’s stories.

Sansa shook her head, cheeks darkening with a blush. 

“No, your grace,” she said and averted her eyes looking shy and nervous again. “I just always thought the Targaryen’s were beautifully romantic and so I know a few of the dragon’s names.” 

“I wouldn’t think a Stark would ever think my house romantic or beautiful,” Dany admitted to her, not holding back but softer than she had been in the audience chamber.

“My father wasn’t a hateful man, your grace,” Sansa turned her body to face Dany, looking her in the eyes and holding her ground though her hands shook. “I don’t think there was a person in the world he despised for any reason. Even your father or brother,”

“He told us fond stories of his father and brother and never spoke of his sister. Never said a bad word about your House if one of us foolishly asked. He never got angry, just sad,” she said and then looked back to the sky, at the dragons growing smaller as they flew off aways over the city, her mind in the past from the way her eyes glazed over as she thought up a memory.

“There names are Drogon, Rhaegel, and Viserion. For my late husband and my brothers,” Dany answered her previous question, and Sansa nodded, still thoughtful. There was something fascinating about her expression and Dany found herself drinking in every little thing about her face. Was she thinking of home? Of her brothers back West?

“Shall we eat,” Dany looked back into the room, taking her eyes off the profile of Sansa’s face to where the table was not completely set for them.

Sansa looked at her and smiled, big and open and almost too trusting. When was the last time Dany let down her guard? They went in and took their seats across from each other and she almost laughed at the look on Sansa’s face as she took in all the rich, and wonderful smelling plates of food. Sansa wet her lips and swallowed, staring at the food as if it was the most beautiful site in all the world. Then her eyes landed on a particular plate of desert and Dany thought she might float up out of her seat.

“Lemon cakes,” Sansa sighed in a dreamy fashion, her eyes glistening.

Dany picked up one of the small, spongy yellow cakes. “I love lemons. There used to be a lemon tree outside the house I grew up in when we first came to Essos, in Braavos,”

Sansa looked like a child, mouth in a broad and happy grin when presented with the treat.

“They’re my favorite, I could stuff myself full with them alone and never get sick of them,” they laughed together at this and Dany took a bite of her cake, looking at Sansa to grab one and do the same. She happily did so, sucking on the tips of her fingers to get every crumb. They ate half the plate clean between them before Dany realized that there was still so much food left to eat.

“As much I love lemon cakes, we should eat some of the other foods too.” Dany encouraged, as she stabbed into a dog sausage. Dog was a delicacy in Meereen and a favorite cuisine of the people. It was tasty, but there were other meats Dany would prefer over it if she had a choice. That was why they also had chicken and goat, there were olive dressing over salads and grilled onions, cheese, bread, and seafood.

“What are these?” Sansa asked her, pointing to the opened oysters.

“You’ve never had an oyster?” Dany asked, brow furrowing, “I can understand in the North, but Kings Landing should have plenty in the fish markets,”

“Oh, I’m sure they do but I’ve never had the pleasure of them,” Sansa quickly explained herself, squinting at the shellfish. 

“How do you eat them?” she asked, eyeing her fork and spoon, trying to figure out which was used.

“I’ll show you,” Dany picked up a tinier fork and one of the oysters, then she put the fork under the meat in the liquid-filled shell and just scraped, wiggling it to make sure it was free then put down her fork. She brought the wide end of the shell to her lips and slurped down the oyster.

Sansa looked at her scandalously.

“How obscene!” she said, covering her mouth, face red.

Dany threw back her head and laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so this was a nice and fun chapter to write.  
> I am trying to have them instantly bond without it being over the top or 'love at first sight' it's a slow build after all.  
> Regarding Dany, I am trying to make her more reasonable to things that she should honestly care about and be aware of as a ruler. She's limited on a lot but some of it is common sense, instinct, or things she could have picked up on from even Visery's prejudiced stories about their family.  
> I want to make her a good ruler, not perfect, but good all the same.  
> Sansa's openness is pretty much how she was with Margaery, that is how Sansa sees Dany right now and things will go from there. I promise Sansa will grow stronger and steelier with time to stand beside Dany proudly.


	6. Trees

She couldn’t remember the last time she had so much fun eating a meal with someone. Drogo perhaps? Once the two started to speak the same tongue when they had come to love each other. Her heart still yearned for him, her sun and stars, her ferocious and brutal husband that had risen her high, who treated her like a queen, who had been her true equal despite their differences.

It was a delight teaching Sansa how to eat an oyster and crack open some of the other kinds of shellfish she was not familiar with. The faces the temporary brunette made and her nervousness in the face of these new foods was adorable. Sansa was familiar with fish and some shellfish, but there were Essosi dishes she had never seen before amongst the plates of food and it was fun to introduce her to the taste and experience of each one. She perhaps took too much pleasure in feeding her the food by hand, but she tried not to think about that. There were a few platters she knew from serving meals to her former masters but had never eaten. She mentioned she was not very fond of dog meat, having grown all her life in Westeros where dogs were pets, or pest control. It seemed terribly rude to eat such loyal animals especially when it was not a matter of eating one or starving.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten to my heart’s content,” Sansa said, dabbing at her mouth for stains and crumbs like a proper lady. “In Kings Landing, I ate with the King or his mother on occasion, but I could never let myself enjoy any of the food when I was with them.”

“And Volantis?” Daenerys asked her, curious to know more about her time when she had just arrived in Essos.

“The sewing house had a cook. It was enough to keep us going but very bland. I was simply grateful I was not starving like others,” Sansa explained and Daenerys nodded. Daenerys understood what it was like to feel those hunger pains, for her mouth to be so parched her tongue turned to paper and would crack, her blood the closest thing to having water. Her memory of the house with the red door and the lemon tree outside her window was blurred, but she remembered with perfect clarity the days she and Viserys hopped from one city to the other, always moving, trying to find allies, begging for asylum, food, and protection. She remembered the pains in her belly, the weakness she felt as they went days without food after the last of their fortune, their mother’s crown was sold and the funds from it spent getting to the next city they would hide in from Robert Baratheon’s hounds.

Sansa’s perked up with a new thought.

“Sometimes though, if I was feeling terribly lonely and had the money, I would buy a treat for myself in the market. A little desert or a fresh, ripe fruit.” she smiled, eyes distant with the memory though it was not so long ago.

She looked at her hands now in her lap, her smile turning down to a frown. “I never realized how much I took my meals for granted until after the bread riot, but---”

“Bread Riot?” Daenerys asked, not knowing what she was speaking about. Sansa apologized and explained.

With the war in Westeros, many supply lines from places like the Reach or Vale to Kingslanding were being cut off. Joffrey and his family gorged themselves on what shipments were still making it in or the royal family’s personal store of food. Outside in the streets, the people starved as they got their food from the land routes and they were risking overfishing in Black Water Bay. If they tried to go further out they would risk crossing into Stanniss Baratheons’ territory. The details of this Sansa learned from court gossip.

The Bread Riot occurred on the day the Princess Myrcella was sent to Dorne. They had been attacked on the way back to the Red Keep after seeing her off. Sansa shuddered when she told Daenerys about the Septon that had been ripped apart, the mother that had held her lifeless baby over her head for Joffrey to see the haunted look in her eyes. How she had gotten separated in the chaos and was almost raped by some starving and angry men.

“I never thought about things like people starving, what it could do to a person, not until that day. My fathers always made sure that people were fed in the North” she sighed and her bottom lip warbled. “I have been very fortunate to never have suffered such a plight. I truly have never been more humbled in all my life after what I’ve seen,”

Daenerys reached over, taking her hand in hers. Sansa had suffered a great deal and Daenerys felt for her as she saw much of the other in herself, her younger self before Drogo and her dragons.

“I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through,” she offered and meant it, violet eyes staring deeply and understandingly into Sansa’s. “I promise, that is not the queen I will be. For Meereen or Westeros,”

Sansa looked troubled. Did she not believe her?

“I’ve been to the mess halls, your grace,” Sansa began, seeming nervous to say what it was she wanted to say. Daenerys encouraged her to go on, “The young are not kind or respectful to the old, they steal rations from the elderly freedmen, as well as their blankets in the barracks.”

Daenerys went stiff, she pushed her shoulders back, mouth a sour purse at hearing this. She expected better from her freedman, she let them have their release, their justice at the start but had thought she made it clear it would not continue once she entered the city. “Thank you for telling me, I will see that my Unsullied is sent to handle the matter and keep such behavior from continuing further,"

Sansa nodded and Daenerys considered asking her more. Would it make her look stupid, to ask Sansa questions about the city, about the people? Would it make her appear a clueless queen to seek her council? What was the worth of her pride when measured against doing right by her children, her people. If she asked if she learned now more could be done while she was still trying to fill her council.

In the end, she swallowed her pride and ego.

“You’ve been down in the streets, you’ve lived among the former slaves. Do you think there is anything else I should know?” at this Sansa looked shocked to have her opinion asked for.

“Um, I don’t know if it would be my place,” Sansa mumbled, lowering her chin and staring at her plate. 

“Nonsense,” Daenerys said sharply, making Sansa look at her. “I value the opinion of all my people, especially those with the insight to help me help everyone else.”

Sansa looked baffled by her and Daenerys wondered if she should take that as a compliment or be offended.

“Besides, I wish to make you a lady-in-waiting to myself.” She grinned, and Sansa’s eyes went as large as saucers. “I am proud, how can I not be after all my achievements, my struggles. But I am not so proud to deny that when it comes to royal court I am at a loss.”

Sansa blinked, still registering what it was that Daenerys was offering her. “Lady Sansa, you have the education I was denied and hands-on experience with the lords and ladies of Westeros in the capital. I need more than soldiers and knights, I need people like you to help put me on the throne,”

The girl looked ready to cry, her face going red and her hand shaking beneath Daenerys’s palm.

“I just want to go home, I just want my brother and mother,” She told Daenerys and she understood too well, remembering feeling the same way before she was meant to marry Drogo. “Were you lying when you said you would take me home?”

“No!” Daenerys answered her vehemntly. “I will send you home, but you have to understand the position I’m in. I’m not trying to be cruel,”

Sansa sniffled, trying to compose herself and looking embarrassed by her behavior, even apologizing for accusing her of being a liar. She was just too familiar with being deceived, with being promised something and then the opposite of being done. Daenerys tried to be patient and understanding with her. She had a reason to be wary of her, of not fully trusting her yet.

She tried another approach.

“I don’t even know if your brother is still alive, Lady Sansa,” she admitted, using a soft and gentle tone of caution with her now. “Last you heard he was living, and I hope he still is, but you’ve been gone for months and anything could have happened,”

“After what you have been through I would not send you back to a war-torn Westeros if there is no one there who could take you in and protect you,” she said, trying to make it seem she was more concerned for Sansa then the political leverage she would be giving up if she let Sansa go.

Sansa shook her head, a hard look in her eyes, a certainty. “No, he’s alive. I would know if he wasn’t,”

“How?” Daenerys asked, curious if she had some informant despite her previous circumstances.

Sansa hesitated, eye big and owlish. “I---”

“I wouldn’t,” she stifled a sob behind her hand. 

Daenerys reacted almost instinctively, moving from her spot to sit beside Sansa, her arms around her shoulders, pulling her close, running a hand over her hair and shushing her gently. Comforting her in a way she had not comforted someone since Irri when Rakharo’s head was sent back to them with his horse in the Red Waste.

“I wish I could tell you that we would know soon, but news from Westeros does not reach us here until much later. And it can be unreliable if it’s just word of mouth,” she tried to explain to her as she held her, let Sansa wrap her taller body around her smaller one, accepting her comfort. She shook in her arms, like a lithe tree in a storm. Daenerys could never let herself appear so weak in front of anyone like Sansa was. To cry, to shake, to admit her fears and attachments less risk having them used against her.

“I’m sure it will be alright,” she said a few times over, trying to help the other woman calm down. “I’m sure he is fine, he and your mother both,”

She thought of Elia Martell. She thought of her own mother. Bystanders, innocents caught in the war. Thought of Rhaegar, good and noble and dead. She couldn’t make any promises, give no guarantees to Sansa. It wasn’t fair. The Lannisters were dishonorable and ruthless, if Robb Stark was as good and noble as her brother what chance did he have against Tywin?

She held Sansa tighter.

When Sansa had gotten it all out she looked horrified, her face all red and hair a little frizzled as she stood and dipped into a deep curtsey.

“Your grace, my deepest apologies for being so inappropriate with you,” Sansa said, keeping her head down, eyes on the floor rather than on Daenerys. “It is unacceptable,”

“I don’t mind,” Daenerys shrugged. “Do you feel any better?”

Sansa gave a little nod as she patted away what remained of her tears with a napkin. “Yes, thank you,”

She took her seat again and looked at her hands. Daenerys thought it might be time to end things for the night. Lady Sansa had endured a great deal and she was sure to be tired more so than ever now that her belly is full.

“You are a guest here,” Daenerys smiled, motioning for a servant to come forward and start cleaning the table. She ordered that the leftovers not to go to waste, it would be packed and distributed amongst the elderly.

“You are free to explore the pyramid or to go into the city as you please, I will even provide you an allowance for personal spending. Anything you need or desire, just send me a request and you shall have it.” Sansa practically bawked at her.

“Your grace is too generous,” Sansa stood after she did, curtsying.

“And you are too humble,” she countered, holding a hand up in hopes to halt any excuses as to why she should not be kind. “I assure you, there are limits to my charity, of course, I will not spoil you rotten but you I would see you have the luxuries you might have had in the North, appropriate of your station,”

“Please, think carefully over my offer to be one of my ladies. It would be my great honor and pleasure to have your companionship on a daily,” she smiled and then wished Sansa a good night before departing to her own chambers.

Her one on one with Sansa had gone very well, she felt this was the start of a wonderful friendship. She was also not completely ignorant of the diplomatic benefits of having a good relationship with Lady Sansa. There was still the question though of how much Robb Stark valued his sister. It did not seem he had made many concessions for her safety and return to him. Sansa seemed to think very highly of her brother and had a deep love for him, but perhaps Robb did not return her good opinion of his sister. That was concerning. She would have to slowly encroach on the subject again, try to find out more. Sansa may very well be useless in negotiations with her brother and Daenerys pitied the girl. She saw her brother as a heroic knight, that he would come and rescue her and despite his lack of doing so as of yet she still seemed to admire and adore him. Waiting still for him, believing he was alive when she had no proof.

What would it have been like to love Viserys that way, to have that sort of faith in her brother. She missed him some days, missed the boy he had been that would let her climb into his bed when she was frightened, who would tell her stories of Westeros and play dragon riders with her. They could have been happy and normal siblings if things had been different and she envied Sansa for her happy childhood. At the same time, she felt a bitter resentment that she tried to push down. The daughter of the man that helped usurp her father, destroy her family, got to have a happy and lovely childhood of privilege and dreams while she and her brother lived like beggars, had everything robbed from them.

She knew it was not Sansa’s fault. Neither of them were to blame for their parents but it was still a tough pit to swallow.

She couldn’t look back, she had to burn a new path for House Targaryen, rebuild bridges, plant trees, start new.

_Dragons plant no trees._

No, she shook those words from her mind. That wasn’t true. Dragons could build, they could make things prosper. Her ancestors had done so in Westeros, they built the Red Keep, created Kings Landing from a slop of mud into a city of power and wonder. She would continue that legacy. She was the only one left to do so. The last dragon.


	7. Update :’(

I will be discontinuing this story until further notice. I have removed many if not all of my stories and it was a deeply personal choice to do so. It was not easy to do after the time and effort I put into my fics. Yet having them gone is a huge relief to me for a number of reasons.  
This should no way be taken as me no longer liking or shipping characters in this fandom despite your take away of what I do or do not like from things I’ve rebloggef on my tumblr account in this fandom.  
I apologize for the diss appointment this may cause some of you and thank you for your kind and constructive comments through out the few chapters I managed to produce for this fic.  
I hope everyone stays safe and healthy.

**Author's Note:**

> Though Sansa did not have a face tattoo or wore a collar as others slaves, the moment that Turakina took her in she was considered her property and therefore in Volantis could sell her into Slavery. Girls could only leave her house to marry if she gave her permission to do so, if they didn't they would have no choice but to run away. They could still have sex if they wanted but if they fell pregnant they could be put out and with the babe or if the babe was born in Turakina's house she would, therefore, be the childs owner and sell it if she wanted. In the case of Sansa's predecessor both she and the baby died.  
> It's all very fucked up.  
> Let me know what you guys think are what you might be excited for.  
> Jezheka's hair is described off of albaso braids.  
> If you guys want to check out the type of clothes Sansa wore and made during this chapter than check them out here,  
> https://www.modaoperandi.com/volantis-ss18


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